For the first few pages of Paul Schneider’s Bonnie and Clyde, The Lives Behind The Legend, we see tall, willowy, sultry Faye Dunaway as the infamous gangster moll, Bonnie Parker, and we picture tall, broad-shouldered Warren Beatty as her outlaw boyfriend, Clyde Barrow. It doesn’t take long for the author to get the real people back in focus: Bonnie is petite (under five feet tall), more adorable than sultry, and Clyde also is short but a head taller than his energetic pip-squeak girlfriend.

Summer resident and award-winning landscape architect Michael VanValkenburgh will give an illustrated presentation and reflection of Vineyard landscapes he has designed over the past 25 years on Wednesday, August 5 at 7:30 p.m. at Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury.

The poems in Portrait of a Reading Woman convey the tapestry of a life richly lived and richly told. Originally a Bostonian, Helen Gorenstein has spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard for over 40 years. Drawing on memories from her childhood in the 1930s, her marriage, and her “long summers” on the Island, she retraces her steps from childhood into her seventh decade.

Noted Harvard Law professor Alan M. Dershowitz will discuss the Obama administration’s relationship with Israel in a talk titled Obama and Israel: Friends Or Foes? at the Chilmark Public Library on Thursday, August 6 at 5 p.m. Free copies of his latest book The Case For Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza, donated by Mr. Dershowitz, will be given to the first 100 people in attendance.

Island Voices

Island Voices at Che’s Lounge in Vineyard Haven offers a new poetry performance series continues on Wednesday, August 5 at 7:30 p.m. Ben Williams will perform and host the event with Island poets Janette Vanderhoop and Andrew Larsen performing their work. An open reading follows the featured poets. All Island poets are invited.