TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME. By Carly Simon (performer, author), Jack Norworth (author) and Amiko Hirao (illustrator). Imagine, a Charlesbridge Imprint. April 2011. 26 pages, hardcover. $17.95.

Imagine a 1908 Tin Pan Alley ditty that continues to be heard by tens of millions of Americans on a daily basis — at least during baseball season. Yes, the incredibly catchy Take Me Out to the Ballgame (by Jack Norworth), is the unofficial baseball anthem, and it gets the crowds roaring to the immortal lyrics:

Caleb’s Crossing, By Geraldine Brooks, Viking, 2011, Hardcover, 320 Pages, $26.95, in bookstores May 3.

The Hard Way Around> , by Geoffrey Wolff. Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. 218 pages. Hardback, $25.95

A confession: I love sea stories, but until a few weeks ago, I had never read one of the great, true-life adventure books ever written — Sailing Alone Around the World, by Capt. Joshua Slocum, originally of Nova Scotia and at the end of his life from a farm he called Fag End in West Tisbury.

To us Islanders Linda Fairstein is, first and foremost, one of our best known summer Chilmark residents. To the rest of the world, she’s the best-selling author of the Alexander Cooper series, featuring Assistant D.A. Cooper of the Special Victims Unit in Manhattan.

In actual life Ms. Fairstein served as the Assistant D.A. in the Special Victims Unit in Manhattan. So when her fictional character files a particular brief or points out that it’s a point of law that the public is entitled to attend a court hearing she knows whereof she speaks.

BUSING BREWSTER: By Richard Michelson, illustrated by R.G. Roth, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, N.Y. 2010. $16.99, hardcover.

By ROB HAMMETT

HIGH ON THE HOG: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. By Jessica B. Harris. Bloomsbury, January 2011. 304 pages, photographs. $26, hardcover.

It amazes new students of ar chaeology that the most essential insights into a bygone community may be found in the humble section of rubble called the kitchen midden. It’s here that broken plate ware is examined, along with iron pots and pans and broken ceramic jars containing trace elements of oil from which experts reassemble the daily fabric of a past society’s life.

By LIZ DURKEE

WALKINGS TRAIL OF MARTHA’S VINEYARD: The Comprehensive Pocket Guide to Island Trails, William Flender, Fourth Edition, Vineyard Conservation Society, Martha’s Vineyard, MA, 2010, $14.95, 117 PAGES.

A weatherproof, pocket-sized, fully-loaded guide to the Island’s walking trails. What a concept! It is such a good idea that the Vineyard Conservation Society has just published its fourth edition of Walking Trails of Martha’s Vineyard by William Flender.

If you look up libraries on Wikipedia, you’ll learn that a golden age arose from 1600 to 1700 when cities all over the world had to erect a big, baroque building for books. If there’s ever been a new claim for a golden age, it’s right here, right now, involving our Island libraries, all of them, where circulation is up as never before (25 per cent at the Edgartown library alone), and community participation is off the charts.

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester, HarperCollins Publishers, 496 pages, illustrated. $27.99.

It would be hard to live on the Vineyard and not have an interest in the Atlantic Ocean. So much of the Island has been colored and shaped by the sea. You can smell the ocean here and feel it all around you.

A new book, Atlantic, is a biography of the ocean. What is most striking about this long book is its scope.

It must be tough to pick a name for your second solo cookbook when the first one refers to raising the bar, as in Catherine Walthers's 2007 book, Raising the Salad Bar.