For 21 years — from the late summers of 1874 through 1895 — a passenger train chuffed along a route that looks inconceivably imposing to us today: from what’s now the Oak Bluffs Steamship Authority wharf, over the very sands of State Beach, through the fairways and greens of the Edgartown Golf Club, perpendicularly across Upper Main street, along the border of not one but two cemeteries and into what are now the subdivisions and farmlands of Katama before terminating at two dead ends: the dunes of South Beach and a hotel at Mattakessett whose ugliness was rivaled only by its windswept isolation and self-evident vulnerability to fire.
Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, by Barbara Bick, The Feminist Press, $14.99.
History has left us the chronicles of a number of intrepid women of the West who have traversed the Near and Middle East. In this tradition, but surpassing it in many ways, Barbara Bick of Vineyard Haven has written Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a testimony for our time. It is a lucid, passionate and at times harrowing political book written on behalf of the women of Afghanistan.
EXILES IN THE GARDEN. By Ward Just. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. July, 2009. 288 pages. $25.
Anyone who has spent time in London, Paris, Tokyo or any other major capital inevitably is dissatisfied in Washington, D.C.
Chosen by compromise, built atop a swamp, and provincial to its core, it offers some of the nation’s most appalling architecture (e.g., the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, or the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building) and weather to match.
Paul Carrick wrote and illustrated Watch Out for Wolfgang. And it’s a keeper.
To have illustrated and written his first children’s book is obviously very exciting for Mr. Carrick. “There’s something magical about seeing it neatly bound together in a complete package,” he said. “It was a special experience to be involved in all aspects of its design: I got to pick the book’s dimensions, the typefaces — everything.”
NEGOTIATE LIKE THE PROS: A Top Sports Negotiator’s Lessons for Making Deals, Building Relationships, and Getting What You Want. By Kenneth Shropshire. McGraw-Hill. October, 2008. 224 pages. $19.95.
Professor Kenneth Shropshire is a former all-state athlete who grew up in inner city Los Angeles and attended Stanford on a football scholarship. He is a sports fan who can discuss ESPN news with enthusiasm and will knowledgeably forward his opinions on shady college recruitment practices and sports agent scandals.
Sometime in the summer of 1970, a young Jim Athearn stood on Main street in Edgartown and faced one of the most important decisions of his life. The 22-year-old aspiring farmer had just received a few stern words from a market owner who had told him that his corn — the first crop he had ever grown and sold to market — was no good. His ears were full of worms, the owner told him. The words stung like a swarm of angry hornets.
Bittersweet Beginnings:> A Sketchbook of a Great Depression Boyhood by James V. Wyman. Plaidsweed Publishing, Concord, N.H. Illustrated by Linda L. Tillson , 137 pages $19.95
