Unraveling the Conversation on Race
Alex Elvin

Hundreds of people filled the Chilmark Community Center on Friday to hear award-winning journalists Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michele Norris discuss Mr. Coates’s new book and the idea of a post-racial America.

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A Communion of Dictators Binds Fascism and the Catholic Church
Alex Floyd

Benito Mussolini is long gone, but the institution that helped bring him and keep him in power may not be, according to a new Pulitzer Prize winning book by historian and Brown University professor David Kertzer.

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Authors and Panels That Inform and Provoke Define Book Festival
Alex Elvin

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates headlines a sold-out public discussion Friday that explores the idea of a post-racial America. The discussion kicks off the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival, which runs Saturday and Sunday in Edgartown and Chilmark.

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Making Fast Dinners Without a Fuss; It's the Holy Grail for Every Family
Remy Tumin

What’s for dinner? That’s the question the four Pollan family women kept finding themselves asking one another. The Pollan Family Table, written by Corky Pollan and her daughters Lori, Tracy and Dana, was the answer.

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By Digging Up the Whole Story, Writer Honors the Death of His Roommate
Alex Elvin

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, released last year to wide acclaim, is Mr. Hobbs’s memorial to his Yale roommate Robert Peace's life, telling the story from birth to death in obsessive detail and a clear, heartfelt narrative.

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To Make History a Page Turner, Stay Curious
Louisa McCullough

Erik Larson’s advice to those who want to write? “Work as a cop on the side,” he told the Gazette in a recent interview. “Immersing yourself in life is the best thing for writing.” The author did not take his own advice, though.

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A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma With No Conclusion; Art Heist Still Mystifies
Alex Floyd

Stephen Kurkjian’s new book has the characters, intrigue and pace of a mystery novel. All it lacks is the culprit. That’s because his subject matter, the burglary at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, remains unsolved.

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All Hail the Mast Brothers, Sweet Siblings of Chocolate
Remy Tumin

When Rick Mast decided to start a chocolate company with his brother Michael, the two set a date to show up at work two months later, promptly at 8 a.m. The idea was to first take the summer off to do whatever they wanted.

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Animals as Social Beings Is Not Such a Wild Idea
Heather Hamacek

With a PhD in ecology and a jaunty writing style, Carl Safina isn’t so much a science writer as he is a writer who is a scientist.

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Let Us Now Praise the Humble Apostrophe
Remy Tumin

Mary Norris is concerned about the future of the apostrophe.

“The apostrophe is most vulnerable to the march of progress,” said Ms. Norris, a query proofreader for the New Yorker since 1993.

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