Since glaciers from the last Ice Age pushed a mound into what we now call Vineyard Sound, and left it stranded, Martha's Vineyard has seen its share of changes. Even seventy-five years ago, who could have predicted that a former native American homeland and onetime whaling hub would be the wealthy, glamorous Vineyard of today, host to Presidential entourages and movie stars? Arthur Railton might have predicted it. He was fifteen in 1930, and already spending summers there. Now, on the wise side of ninety, he has just completed a ten-year project: writing the definitive history of the place he calls "my favorite on the planet." Few could be more qualified for the task. Since his retirement from a journalistic career in the late 1970s, he has edited the quarterly journal of the Martha's Vineyard Historical Society, the Duke's County Intelligencer. How did the Vineyard get to where it is today? Based on meticulous research, Railton traces the history from that last Ice Age and what we know of native American life on the Vineyard prior to European settlement. Chapter by chapter, his narrative presents the arrival of white men, the importance of the Dutch Rebellion, the rise of prominent families like the Mayhews, the Vineyard's role in the American Revolution, the search for "God, gold, whales, and more," how Vineyarders experienced the Civil War, the development of Cottage City and other summer watering holes, and 20th century developments until after the Second World War. Beautifully illustrated, this is a book to be treasured by anyone who has ever lived on, summered on, or just wanted to be anywhere near Martha's Vineyard.