Books & Ideas
David McCullough laughingly calls the pretty little eight-by-10-foot structure in his back yard his “world headquarters.” Naturally, he was keen to pass on the details of its architecture and history.
“This is where I’ve worked since 1972,” he said. “It was built by Alan Miller, an artist with carpentry. He built the Black Dog in Vineyard Haven. He built numerous buildings around the Island, all distinctive.”
Could it be that western system of market capitalism has broken down so badly that its failings present a threat to democracy itself?
That was the question left ominously hanging at the end of a presentation by three eminent economists — two from the Harvard Business School and one private forecaster — at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center on Thursday night.
The tagline of the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Institute, “from the front lines of politics, science and the arts,” proved too true last week when the program’s scheduled July 21 speaker, Cong. Barney Frank, was called back to the front. Mr. Frank and his colleagues in Congress won’t be taking their customary recess as the political battle continues over the federal debt ceiling.
But another formidable speaker, Kenneth Feinberg, will fill the July 21 bill.
BEARING DRIFT: A Story of Tragedy, Heroism and How Thirty-Four Sailors Rescued the U.S. Coast Guard. By Peter Sloan Eident. Pirate Press. 350 pages, $29.95.
The Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury is more than just a pleasant experience with nature, although it is definitely that. It is a place to learn and become more in tune, not just with what nature has to offer, but the drastic changes taking place in our ecosystem on a daily basis.
Of all the ways to go, who would have thought the grocery store would become one of the prime unravelers of our mortal coil.
Sad but true says Nancy Deville in her book Death by Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down and Poisoning of America.
The problems are many. So many foods laden with high-fructose corn syrup, vegetable oil, endocrine disrupting soy, neurologically damaging aspartame, and all the rest of the maddening ingredients now commonplace in factory made food.