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.

As a prize-winning sociologist and Harvard professor of education, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot possesses the curriculum vitae of one of the most successful women alive — in that achievement-oriented way that we worship in the ambitious classes of America. And yet she radiates the serenity and contemplative qualities of a genuine holy woman.

Fanny Howe of West Tisbury was honored last week with the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, awarded annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living American poet for lifetime accomplishments that warrant extraordinary recognition. The $100,000 that accompanies the award is one of the largest literary prizes in the nation.

Beatles Book Published

Tom Dresser’s new book, It Was 40 Years Ago Today, has been published to coincide with the anniversary of the Beatles releasing their final, famous recording, Abbey Road, 40 years ago — on Sept. 12, 1969. The Oak Bluffs author’s newest work contains a compendium of Beatle albums, background information on their songs, dozens of comments by Beatles fans and coming-of-age memories of the sixties.

Author John Hough Jr. talks about his acclaimed new book, Seen the Glory, about two brothers from Martha’s Vineyard during the Civil War, at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 5:30 p.m.

Technothriller writer, essayist, postmodern literary fabulist and Island resident John Sundman will discuss his work and the meaning of literature in the age of the Internet at the Vineyard Haven library at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 15. The talk, entitled Cheap Complex Devices, is free and open to the public.

Russ Baker, The Muckraker

In a program called The Hidden History of the United States, author and journalist Russ Baker will discuss his new book — Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the powerful forces that put it in the White House and what their influence means for America — on Wednesday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Vineyard Haven Public Library

Mr. Baker contends that the national security establishment behind the Bushes rise continues to maintain a grip on the Obama administration.

Award-winning author Linda Kenney Miller, who wrote Beacon on the Hill, spent her childhood summers at Oak Bluffs. Her grandfather, John A. Kenney, vacationed on the Vineyard ever since 1913 when his wife’s family first bought the Kenney cottage on Huntington avenue.

Book Reading

This Thursday, all are invited to a reading and signing for a book is titled Airlift to America: How Barack Obama Sr, John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya and 800 East African Students Changed Their World and Ours, written by Tom Shachtman with a foreword by Harry Belafonte. The event Thursday, August 27, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Midnight Farm in Vineyard Haven. Mr. Shachtman will be introduced by Cora Weiss of Aquinnah, who was executive director of the foundation that administered the unique initiative from 1959 to 1963.

Feminist Lecture

New York University Professor Dr. Carol Gilligan will discuss her new book, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance and Democracy’s Future, on Wednesday, August 26 at 5:30 p.m. at the Chilmark Public Library.