Issue #200
www.ralphmag.org/FZ/indexFZ.html
Mid-Spring 2010

Enrico Dandolo
The Doge of Venice
Oil from Iraq
The Effects of War
Charles Bukowski on Boils
Subscriptions to RALPH in Foreign Currencies
I Love You
Prince Al
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

OUR 200th ISSUE:
The Best of the Best
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Fifteen of the Most Worthy Books
Reviewed on Our Pages over the
Last Few Years

Some Also-Rans
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Thirty Almost Equally Worthy Books

A Dozen Stinkers
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Twelve or so Ghastlies
We Reluctantly Reviewed

Editors' Picks
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Best Articles, Poems,
and Readings from
Our First Five Years

The Paradox of Paradoxes
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Selection of
Fifteen of Our Favorite Paradoxes:
Questions of the Ages ---
Posed But Never Exposed

Bad Cop
New York's Least Likely
Police Officer Tells All
Paul Bacon
(Bloomsbury)
The Harold Lloyd of the
15th Precinct Tells All

The Black Girl Next Door
A Memoir
Jennifer Baszile
(Touchstone/S&S)
Growing up Rich (but
Misunderstood) in Palo Verdes

The Unwanted Sound of
Everything We Want[B]
A Book about Noise
Garret Keizer
(PublicAffairs)
Everything You Don't Want to Know about
Screeching, Howling, Buzzing, Sirens,
Motors, Drones and Whistles

Daughters of Zion[B]
A Family's Conversion to Polygamy
Kim Taylor
(Rogue Hill)
Everything You Don't Want
to Know about Having
400 or 500 In-Laws

La's Orchestra Saves the World[B]
A Novel
Alexander McCall Smith
(Pantheon)
The Guy Who Invented
"The #1 Ladies Detective Agency"
on Life in WWII Britain

First Light:[B]
Five Photographers Explore
Yosemite's Wilderness
Charles Cramer, et. al.
(Heyday Books)
An Exquisite Collection of
Photographs of Hidden Yosemite

"On the Death of Mr Barker of Hammon,
and his wife who dyed both together"
George Herbert
[Poem]
An Exquisite Exposition on
the Death of a Loving Couple

Revolutionaries: A New History
of the Invention of America
Jack Rakove
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Thesis Being that the
Revolutionaries of 1776
Were Not Very Revolutionary at All

In the Time of the Lime Trees
Olga Tokarczuk
[Reading]
The Limes that Grow on
the Jeszkotle to Kieice Road

The Partial Vapor
Pressure of Khometz
Dr. Phage
[Article]
The Difference Between
the Letter KHET and
the Letter MEM

Primeval and Other Times*
Olga Tokarczuk
Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Translator
(Twisted Spoon)
The Lives (and Deaths) of
a 20th Century Polish
Community

Dancing Under
the Red Star[G]
The Extraordinary Story of
Margaret Werner, the Only
American Woman to
Survive Stalin's Gulag
Karl Tobin
(Water Brook)
Years of Enforced Isolation
in Gorky --- and in the Gulags

Meeting D. T. Suzuki
Jacob Needleman
[Reading]
"What is the Self?"
"Who is asking the question?"

Issue #201
www.ralphmag.org/GA/indexGA.html
Late Spring 2010

Dada
Rototillers
Adrienne Rich
The Winter War
Music of the Middle Ages
One in a Million, Baby
Burkina-Faso Gold Mine
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

African Taxi Opera
Douglas Cruickshank
[Article]
Getting around Uganda in an Overloaded Taxi

The Best American Travel Writing --- 2009
Simon Winchester,
Editor
(Mariner)
True Stories from around the World

The Blue Tattoo
The Life of Olive Oatman
Margot Mifflin
(Nebraska)
The Life of a Victorian Woman
with a (Blue) Tattoo on her Chin

Upgraded to Serious [B]
Heather McHugh
(Copper Canyon Press)
Contemporary American Poetry

Is Life Like This?[B]
A Guide to Writing
Your First Novel in
Six Months
John Dufresne
(Norton)
A Point-by-Point Guide to Making a Novel

A Bomb in Every Issue[B]
How the Short, Unruly Life of
Ramparts Magazine
Changed America
Peter Richardson
(The New Press)
A History of the Explosive
Magazine from the Sixties

My Men[B]
Malika Mokeddem
(Nebraska)
The Autobiography of
the Great Feminist from Algeria

Difficult Days
David Lodge
[Reading]
Notes from a Fictional Writer's Life

The Edge of Physics
A Journey to Earth's Extremes
To Unlock the Secrets of the Universe
Anil Ananthaswamy
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Some of the More Obscure Elements of
Astrophysics Examined

Pipestone
My Life in an Indian
Boarding School
Adam Nordwall
(Adam Fortunate Eagle)
(Oklahoma)
Life in a BIA School

Justine velocisima
Oliver Welden
[Poem]
Love Poem from Chile

Revolution on Paper
Mexican Prints 1910 - 1960
Mark McDonald, Editor
(Texas)
Diego Rivera
José Clemente Orozco
David Alfaro Siqueiros
and 32 Others

Prisons of Poverty*
Loïc Wacquant
(Minnesota)
How Prisons are Taking over from the Ghetto

The Demonic Myth of
"The Prison-Industrial Complex"
Loïc Wacquant
[Reading]
The Growth of Prisons Caused
by Some Other Factors

Résistance*
A Woman's Journal of
Struggle and Defiance in
Occupied France
Agnès Humbert
(Bloomsbury)
Four Years as a Prisoner of the Nazis

Washington Sculpture:*
A Cultural History of
Outdoor Sculpture in
The Nation's Capital
Hames M. Goode
(Johns Hopkins)
Over Five Hundred Sculptures
Illustrated and Explained

Issue #202
www.ralphmag.org/GB/indexGB.html
Early Summer 2010

Wisawa Szymborska
A Graduation Speech
My Bloody Life (Reymundo Sanchez)
Chrome Hairpin Tables
Hopping to Hear
FORGIVE MY INDIGNATION
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Edward Lear:
Egyptian Sketches
Jenny Gaschke
(National Maritime Museum)
Sketches and Water-colors by
the Famous Rhymster

Points of View
Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs
John Falconer,
Louise Hide, Editors
(The British Library)
200 Classic Black-and-White Photographs
from the 19th Century

I Am Not Sidney Poitier
Percival Everett
(Graywolf)
A Riotous Novel about Growing Up as
Not a Movie Star

Scenes from
La Cuenca de
Los Angeles*
Y Otros Natural Disasters
Susana Chávez-Silverman
(University of Wisconsin)
A Spanglish Version of Love and Loss
In San Francisco (and the World)

Rhyming Life & Death
A Novel
Amos Oz
Nicholas de Lange
Translator
(Mariner)
The Famous Author Gives
A Reading on Tel Aviv (and Finds Love)
(Sort Of)

Making Poems
Forty Poems
with Commentary
by the Poets
Todd Davis
Erin Murphy
Editors
(Excelsior/University of New York)
Poems, Each with Narrative by the Writer

Audition
Ryu Murakami
Ralph McCarthy, Translator
(Norton)
A Scary Novel about A Woman's Revenge

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
The Incredible Inside Story of
The Collapse of Lehman Brothers
Larry McDonald,
Patrick Robinson
(Ebury Press)
The Story, as Told by One
Who Was Near (But Not
Too Near) the Top

The Collected Poems
Of Dylan Thomas:
Original Edition
Introduction by Paul Muldoon
(New Directions)
Almost 100 Poems
By the Welch Writer
And Orator

Meteorites
Caroline Smith, et al
(Firefly)
A Short Volume on Some of
Those Thousands of Extraterrestrial Visitors

Florida's Great Ocean Railway
Building the Key West Extension
Dan Gallagher
(Pineapple Press)
Flagler's Folly in
Photographs and Drawings

Human Rights in African Prisons[G]
Jeremy Sarkin, Editor
(Ohio University Press)
Essays on the Countries You Should
(And Should Not) Get Arrested in

Mitsubishi Galante
Jon Gallant
[Article]
How the Writer's Family
Came into the Auto Business

"Busto- and Lip-Inflated
Blow-Arriba Dolls"
Susana Chávez-Silverman
[Reading]
Going Malling Filled con
Mi Peor Fobia

A Lifetime of Pickles and Lard Sandwiches
Ted Kooser
[Reading]
Growing up in Iowa
100 Years Ago

"From the Tower"
Heather McHugh
[Poetry]
21st Century American Poetry

"Signs You Are Ovulating"
"What We Think About
The Missing Girl"
Christine Hamm
[Poetry]
21st Century American Poetry

Issue #203
www.ralphmag.org/GC/indexGC.html
Mid-Summer 2010

Edward Lear Poems
Art from Abrams
La Cuenca de Los Angeles
Ethel Merston
A Light that Reaches to Heaven
Bible Banners
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Two Days to Leave
The Readers of RALPH [Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Bonobo Handshake
Vanessa Woods
(Gotham)
Going Native with Mankind's
Nearest (Perhaps) Relative

Little Boy Blues
A Memoir
Malcolm Jones
(Pantheon)
Life with Mother in the North Carolina/
South Carolina Borderlands

Bryson's Dictionary of
Troublesome Words[G]
A Writer's Guide to Getting it Right
Bill Bryson
(Broadway Books)
The English Language
Seen as a Magpie

Chroma
A Book of Color
Derek Jarman
(Minnesota)
The Primary Colors (and Assorted Others)
Against a Background of Blue

Flawless*
Inside the Largest
Diamond Heist
in History
Scott Andrew Selby,
Greg Campbell
(Union Square)
Invading a Diamond Center Safe in Antwerp
and almost Getting away with it

Bad Nature*
Or, With Elvis in Mexico
Javier Marías
(New Directions)
Sordid Adventures in Acapulco
and Mexico City

Hudson River Panorama
A Passage through Time
Tammis K. Groft, et. al.
(Albany Institute of History and Art)
Albany, the Erie Canal, and
Hudson River History

Madre and I
A Memoir of Our Immigrant Lives
Guillermo Reyes
(Wisconsin)
Succeeding in America
Despite Being Young,
Gay and Bashful

Oscar Wilde In America
The Interviews
Matthew Hofer,
Gary Scharnhorst
Editors
(University of Illinois)
Forty-Eight Newspaper Interviews with
the Prophet of Aestheticism

"Beaning Mr. Kopex"
"Spilling Seed"
Pete Dexter
[Reading]
Two Riotous Sequences
from Spooner

U. S. Grant
American Hero,
American Myth
Joan Waugh
(North Carolina)
A Worshipful Account of
the Last Years of the
Soldier and President

"When I Die"
"Cremation"
Carol Chou,
Pia Aliperti
(Hanging Loose Press)
Two Poems from the Anthology,
When We Were Countries

Issue #204
www.ralphmag.org/GD/indexGD.html
Late Summer 2010

Napoleon
The Hudson River
Rom LcO'Feer
Touch Me All Over
Dog Product Business
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Polish Speakers Only
Fowl Play
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Great Poetry Books
The Editors
[List]
Twelve Poetry Books Our Editors
Have Found to Be Especially Fetching

Dining on the B&O
Recipes and Sidelights
From a Bygone Age
Thomas J. Greco
(Johns Hopkins)
Classic Food Served in
the Classic Dining Cars of
the Classic B&O Railroad

The Bug-Club
Douglas Cruickshank
[Article]
Life in Uganda with Grasshoppers
and Other Edible Bugs

Brilliant
The Evolution of
Artificial Light
Jane Brox
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

The History of Artificial Light
Eskimos and the Long Winter Darkness
Jane Brox
[Reading]
The Dark Nights of Arctic Winters

Climate Refugees
Collectif Argos
(MIT)
The Real Facts of those
Who Are Living Day-to-Day with
the Effects of Global Warming

Ground Black People
The Guardian [Reading]
A Misprint that Caused Thousands
To Cough (Fitfully)

Let's Get Free
A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice
Paul Butler
(The New Press)
A Former Prosecutor
Looks at Our Crowded Jails

The Long Song*
Andrea Levy
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A Novel of Slavery on
a Sugar Plantation in Jamaica

Travels in the Reich, 1933 - 1945
Foreign Authors in Germany
Oliver Lubrich, Editor
(University of Chicago)
Excerpts from the Writings of
Three Dozen Travellers in Germany
During the Nazi Years

1989 and
The Cloud of Unknowing
Jon Gallant
[Article]
A Commentary on Victor Sebestyen's
Revolution 1989

I Curse the River of Time
Per Petterson
(Graywolf Press)
Love for Mother Rebuffed
There in Oslo and Jutland

Borges at the Northside Rotary
David Kirby
[Poem]
Trying to Get the Babbitts to Love the Epic

Best Ever Travel Tips
Tom Hall, Editor
(Lonely Planet)
A Handy Guide on Surviving
in the World Out There

America's Famous and
Historic Trees[G]
From George Washington's
Tulip Poplar to
Elvis Presley's Pin Oak
Jeffrey G. Meyer
(Houghton Mifflin)
An Expert on the Great and Famous Trees of America

Issue #205
www.ralphmag.org/GE/indexGE.html
Early Fall 2010

Gutzon Borglum
Les Belle-lettres en RALPH
Browning in Jamaica
I Am Miss Nicy
Selling Sheers
Letters We Never Finished Reading
A Little Quell
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Stars
The Editors
[List]
Twelve Books from the Last Year
that Our Editors Found to Be of Special Merit

Bright Wings
An Illustrated Anthology of
Poems about Birds
Billy Collins, Editor
(Columbia University Press)
A Hundred or So Classic
And Not So Classic
Poems about Our Avian Brothers

Crispbread from Stockholm
Theo Findahl
[Reading]
Hunting for Food, in Berlin,
In April, 1945

A Portrait of
Lost Tibet[G]
Rosemary Jones Tung
(Snow Lion)
A Not-So-Lovely Picture of
Tibet from a Hundred Years Past

Fame*
A Novel in Nine Episodes
Daniel Kehlmann
(Pantheon)
Nine Improbable, Wonderful Stories
About Famous (or Lost,
or Dying) People

Your Presence is
Requested at Suvanto
Maile Chapman
(Graywolf)
The Three Weird Sisters Are Back ---
in a Finnish Nursing Home

Five Ways to Kill a Man
André Breton
[Poem]
The Dada Master's Least
Dadaistic Production

Frying the Flag
Lawrence Durrell
[Reading]
The Story of an Improbable Newspaper
In an Improbable Land

The Alternative Kitchen
Garden: An A-Z
Emma Cooper
(Permanent Press)
Going through the Garden,
Literally, A to Z

Over Autumn Rooftops*
Hai Zi (Zha Haisheng)
(Host)
Contemporary Poetry from China

Twelve Days in Persia*
Across the Mountains with the Bakhtiari Tribe
Vita Sackville-West
(Tauris Parke)
A Classic Post-Victorian Traveller
Somewhere in the Midst of Dusty Iran

Retail (and Tribal) Politics
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Commentary on a Recent Article by
Alex de Waal from the LRB

The Illuminated Landscape
A Sierra Nevada Anthology
Gary Noy, Rick Heide Editors
(Sierra College/Heyday)
Poems, Articles, Stories and Journalism
about the Wonders of Eastern California

The Best Spiritual Writing 2010
Philip Zaleski, Editor
(Penguin)
Poems and Tales about Modern-Day
Spiritualism, Freely Defined

The Swan at
Edgewater Park
Ruth Schwartz
[Poem]
A Verse about a "Slightly Grubby"
Bird in Cleveland OH

What Is God?
Jacob Needleman
(J. P. Tarcher/Penguin)
A Somewhat Mystic
(But Quick) Picture of the Divine

Issue #206
www.ralphmag.org/GF/indexGF.html
Mid-Fall 2010

Psychotherapy or Family Therapy:
Jung, Freud and Milton Erickson
Wokking the Dog
Slugs and Christopher Hitchens
Cryptic Letters:
Young Footballers
Dropping a Massage
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Yours Fairly Fried
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Atlas Of the World's
Strangest Animals
Paula Hammond
(Marshall Cavendish Reference)
Fifty Weird (and Not-So-Weird) Beesties

Packing for Mars
The Curious Science of
Life in the Void
Mary Roach
(Norton)
A Summary of All the Repugnant
Things We Will Have to Do
Before We Arrive on Mars

No Place Like Home
Notes from a Western Life
Linda M. Hasselstrom
(University of Nevada)
Twenty Five Essays on the Vanishing West
and the Horrors of
Living in a Big Small City

One Page at a Time
On a Writing Life
Pat Carr
(Texas Tech University Press)
Name-Dropping and the American
Literary Trail (or Trial)

Hitch 22:
A Memoir
Christopher Hitchens
(Twelve, Hachette Book Group)
The Life of a Man of Letters ---
One Who Shocked All by
Becoming a Bush-Baby

Where Did You Go?" "Out."
"What Did You Do?" "Nothing."
Robert Paul Smith
(Norton)
The Classic 1950s Tale
Of Urban Life

Gay Bar
The Fabulous, True Story of
A Daring Woman and Her Boys
In the 1950s
Helen P. Branson
Will Fellows
(Wisconsin)
The Owner of a Gay Bar In Los Angeles
(Before There Were "Gay Bars")
Tells All

Dead End Gene Pool*
A Memoir
Wendy Burden
(Gotham)
She Came from the Vanderbilts ...
And Left Shaking Her Fist
At Them All

When the Danube Ran Red
Zsuzsanna Ozsváth
(Syracuse)
The Fate of the Jews Under
The Hungarian "Arrow Cross Party"

Whales and Other
Marine Mammals of
California and Baja[G]
Tamara Eder
(Lone Pine)
Everything You Want to Know
About these Massive Blow-Hards

Where is Gogol
When We Need Him?
M. Cohan
[Press Release]
A New Art Form
Once Called "Thievery"

Mental Health in Maine
Wendy Burden
[Reading]
Doing Group Therapy Among
The Proletariat of the Northeast

Life on a Chicken Ranch[G]
Betty MacDonald
[Reading]
The Classic Back-to-the-Farm Story

Night Rain
John Hodgen
[Poem]
Memories of Growing Up

The Spider Speaks
Shara McCallum
[Poem]
The Art of the Arachnid

Work
Yusef Komunyakaa
[Poem]
Temptation in the Fields

Issue #207
www.ralphmag.org/GG/indexGG.html
Late Fall 2010

The Third Avenue El
Wokking the Dog
The Wreck of the Grosvenor
My Bloody Life
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Love Loveline
Letters We Never Finished Reading
A Late Client (Dead)
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Roadside America:*
Architectural Relics from A Vanishing Past
John Margolies
Jim Heimann, Editor
(Taschen)
Stunning Pictures from America's
Weird Roadside Attactions

Friendly Fallout 1953
Ann Ronald
(University of Nevada Press)
The Government of the U. S.
Hell-Bent on Poisoning Its Own Citizens

Volunteer:
A Traveller's Guide to
Making a Difference
Around the World
Charlotte Hindle, et al
(Lonely Planet)
Finding International Organizations
Which Help the Poor
And Less Fortunate

The English Is Coming!
How One Language Is
Sweeping the World
Leslie Dunton-Downer
(Touchstone)
An Exploration of the Roots
Of the English Language
And Where It Is Going

The Colossus Of Maroussi*
Henry Miller
(New Directions)
The Controversial Novelist's
First Non-Fiction Work (1939)

Wicked River:
The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild
Lee Sandlin
(Pantheon)
A Hundred Years of the
Wild & Wooly Mississippi

Come Again No More
Jack Todd
(Touchstone)
Boxing and Horse Rustlers and Love and
The Depression in 1930s Nebraska and Wyoming

Tunnel People
Teun Voeten
(PM)
Living Poor in the Depths of Manhattan

Birds of San Diego[G]
Chris Fisher, Herbert Clarke
(Lone Pine)
Telling the Brewer's Blackbird from the Bushtit
And the Brown-Headed Cowbird

The 3rd Ave. El
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Memories of Great Train Rides through
The Wilds of New York City

Great Country Hotels
S. J. Perelman
[Reading]
Nightlife in the Small Town Hotels of Pennsylvania

The Invasion of the Herrings
Günter Eich
[Poetry]
Fishes Swimming in the Room

Issue #208
www.ralphmag.org/GH/indexGH.html
Early Winter 2010

Ram Dass' Still Here
The 3rd Ave. El --- Part II
DADA
"Starfish"
Karl Marx
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Gelatin
Free Book Reviews
Language Imperialism of English
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Deaf and dont hear and suffering
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

A Gift of Angels*
The Art of Mission San Xavier del Bac
Bernard L. Fontana
(University of Arizona Press)
An Impressive Visit to a
300 Year Old Mission in Arizona

At the BBC
Joseph O'Connor
[Reading]
Old Molly Goes to
Broadcast House for
An On-the-Air Drama

Breathing, In Dust
Tim Z. Hernandez
(Texas Tech University Press)
Twenty-Two Drear Stories
About Growing Up in
the California Central Valley

Daring Steps*
Traversing the Path of the Buddha
Ringu Tulku
(Snow Lion)
Meditations on Ngulchu Thogmé and
Other Tibetan Masters

Ghost Light*
A Novel
Joseph O'Connor
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Old Molly Remembers
Her Young Love,
Playwright John Millington Synge

Killer Crónicas
Bilingual Memories
Susana Chávez-Silverman
(Wisconsin)
Growing Up in California,
Falling in Love with Argentina

The Daring Spectacle*
Adventures in Deviant Journalism
Mark Morford
(Rapture Machine)
How to Offend Practically Anyone
(And, in the Process, Everyone Else)

I Only Am Escaped
Alone to Tell Thee
Howard Nemerov
[Poem]
One of a Series from
The Poets Laureate of America

Nevada:
The Making of Modern Nevada
Hal K. Rothman
(University of Nevada)
A History of the State
With Practically No History

The Poets Laureate Anthology
Elizabeth Hun Schmidt, Editor
(Norton)
All the Poets Honored by America Since 1939 ---
With 20 or So Poems by Each

Planet Saturn
Henry Miller
[Reading]
A Steamy Chapter from
The Colossus of Maroussi

The Wesleyan Anthology
of Science Fiction
Arthur R. Evans, et al, Editors
(Wesleyan University Press)
What They Now Call "sf" ---
From the 19th Century
to the Present

Two Poems
Leontia Flynn
[Poetry]
"The Girl Upstairs"
"Vibrator"

Issue #230
www.ralphmag.org/HD/indexHD.html
Mid-Fall 2012

The Noisiest Book Review in The Known World
Our Review of Hitchens' Mortality
Samuel Johnson and Psoriasis
This Business is Secret
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Great Poems
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Twelve of the Most Lovely Poems
From Our First 18 Years

Human Anatomy*
A Visual History from
The Renaissance to
The Digital Age
Benjamin A. Rifkin
Michael J. Ackerman
Judith Folkenberg
(Abrams)
Illustrations of the Bones of
The Body from the Last 500 Years

The Better End
Surviving (and Dying) on
Your Own Terms in
Today's Modern Medical World
Dan Morhaim
(Johns Hopkins)
Suggestions to Help You to
Die the Way You Want

It's Fine by Me
A Novel
Per Petterson
(Graywolf Press)
Growing Up Bitter
And Yet Surviving

The Night They Pinched My Poke
L. W. Milam
[Article]
Getting Robbed at 1 a.m.
In Your Own Home

Me, Who Dove into
The Heart of the World*
Sabina Berman
(Henry Holt)
Growing Up Autistic
And Finally Succeeding

Mortality
Christopher Hitchens
(Twelve)
The Last Days of
The Master Trouble-Maker

Two Poems
Ellen Bryant Voigt
[Poetry]
Poems about Love and Marriage

One Night
Quim Monzó
[Reading]
The Prince and the Girl Sleeping

Summer of Hate
Chris Kraus
(Semiotext(e))
A Sensible Woman
(And a Very Boring Love)

Trinity:
A Graphic History of
The First Atomic Bomb
Jonathan Fetter-Vorm
(Hill & Wang)
The Bomb --- but in Graphic
(Very Graphic) Form

Issue #231
www.ralphmag.org/HE/indexHE.html
Late Fall 2012

Carol Ann Duffy
Spark in My Heart
Crick Levels
Kufic Stone-Inscriptions
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Great Novels
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Twelve Great and Rare Novels
Drawn frm Our First Eighteen Years
Of Reviews

Seekers and Travellers
Contemporary Art of the Pacific
Northwest Coast
Gary Wyatt
(University of Washington Press)
Paintings, Drawings and Engravings
From Thirty Young Artists
Of the Vancouver Area

Rapture
Carol Ann Duffy
(Faber & Faber)
Fifty or So Contemporary Poems
From the Present Poet Laureate of England

My CIA*
A Memoir
Katherine McCord
(Telling Our Stories Press)
Several Dozen Intense Observations
About Raising Kids,
Beaing Married, and
Worrying about the CIA

Hidden America*
From Coal Miners to Cowbys,
An Extraordinary Exploration of
The Unseen People Who Make
This Country Work
Jeanne Marie Laskas
(Putnam)
An Irreverent Look at
Several Institutions ---
Garbage, Coal, Immigrant Labor, et al ---
That Keep America Afloat

Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah
Patricia Smith
(Coffee House Press)
Over Fifty Poems about
Growing Up Poor
In Poorest Chicago

Kind One
A Novel
Laird Hunt
(Coffee House Press)
America in Pre-Civil War Years
By One Who Was a Slave-Holder
And, at the Same Time, a Slave

Chameleons
Chris Mattison
Nick Garbutt
(Firefly)
A Lovely and Colorful
Exploration of the Delicate
Designs of the Chameleon Family

Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails
A Memoir
Anthony Swofford
(Twelve)
A Fairly Obnoxious Account
Of the Family Drama of
A Drunk and His Obnoxious Son

The Voice of The Poet: Howl
Allen Ginsberg
(Random House Audio)
The Famous Poem
As Read by the Auhor

My Brilliant Career
Dr. Phage[Article]
The Importance of Sleep Deprivation
In Important University Science Departments

We Need Two Suns
Katherine McCord
[Reading]
The Best Way
To Avoid Having to Sleep

The Rolls-Royce Of Landfills
Jeanne Marie Laskas
[Reading]
A View of One of the Best
Landfill/Dumps in the Whole World

Thief of Tongues
Patricia Smith
[Poem]
Going to a Speech Clinic
To Learn to Stop Talking Southern

Issue #232
www.ralphmag.org/HF/indexHF.html
Early Winter 2012 - 2013

18th Anniversary Issue
More about Carol Ann Duffy
Deborah M. Gordon and Ants
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

In Flanders Fields
The 1917 Campaign
Leon Wolff
(Viking Press)
WWI Revisited

To A Former Mistress,
Now Dead
John Updike[Poem]
An Old Love Remembered

Wind & Sand
Lyanne Wescott
(Eastern Acorn Press)
Orville and Wilbur Wright in North Carolina

Rats Lice and History
Hans Zinsser
[Reading]
The Lowly Louse Remembered

The River Merchant's Wife:
A Letter
Riyuku, Trans. E. Pound
[Poem]
One of Pound's Early Translations from the Chinese

A Piece of Meat on a Yellow Tray
Lawrence Shainberg
[Reading]
Thoughts on Neurosurgery

The Lamed-Vovnik
Andre Schwarz-Bart
[Reading]
The Holy Men Described

Another Stinky Dog Story
R. P. Warren
[Reading]
A Dog in Need of Some Certs

The Notebooks
1936-1940
Andre Malraux
[Reading]
Some Writings from the
Existentialist Master

The Meaning of Life
The Mahabarata
[Reading]
Sixteen Paradoxes

Death Fugue
Paul Celan
[Poem]
"Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown"

Don't Tread on Me
The Selected Letters
of S. J. Perelman
(Viking)
Letters from the Master

The Odor of Death
Abraham Verghese
[Reading]
The Various Manifestations of Dying

The Ghost Writer
Philip Roth
[Reading]
How to Write

Hurricanes, Slaves, and Gold
David E. Fisher
[Reading}
Columbus and Slaves

Mother Tongue
Bill Bryson
[Reading]
English & How It Got That Way

The Battle At Little Bull Run
T. F. Bierly
[Poem]
The Civil War and Family Love

Glaucoma
David Wojahn
[Poem]
Vision and Touch

Kicking Doors
Richard Wright
[Reading]
Peace and the Very Religious Family

Ambivalent Zen
Lawrence Shainberg
[Reading]
The Paradox of Zen

His Father Rebukes Him Again
And also Pleads a Little
Amos Oz
[Reading]
The Same Sea

Most of Me
Surviving My Medical Meltdown
Robyn Michele Levy
(Greystone)
Developing Parkinson's and Cancer at the Same Time

The Lighthouse Road
Peter Geye
(Unbridled)
Odd Falls in Love with
His Almost Mother

Dog Eat Dog
Niq Mhlongo
(Ohio University Press)
A Sordid Tale out of
Post-Apartheid South Africa

My Last Sigh[G]
Luis Buñuel
(University of Minnesota Press)
Life Story of the Great Film Director

Issue #233
www.ralphmag.org/HG/indexHG.html
Mid-Winter 2012 - 2013

The Blues
Hitler's First Photograph
Cryptic Letters from India
Cryptic Letters from Chicago
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Gold Mining Farm
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Beautiful Pages
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Dozen of Our Most Beautiful Pages

Discovering Totem Poles
A Traveler's Guide
Aldona Jonaitis
(University of Washington /
Douglas & McIntyre)
Fifty Examples of the Tetem Poles
in Washington, Canada, and Alaska

The Snow White Christmas Cookie
David Handler
(Minotaur)
Murder in Tranquil New England
With all those Crusty New England Suspects

Intimate
An American Family Photo Album
Paisley Rekdal
(Tupelo)
The Great Photographer Edward Curtis
As Seen through the Eyes of One of His Fans

The Vacuum Cleaner
A History
Carroll Gantz
(MaFarland & Co.)
Everything You Could Ever Never Want to Know about
Our Most Homely Home Appliance

Outlaw Marriages
The Hidden Histories of Fifteen
Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples
Rodger Streitmatter
(Beacon)
Fifteen Gay Love Affairs Before
There Was Even the Word "Gay"

Summer Lies
Bernhard Schlink
(Pantheon)
Seven Stories by the Author of The Reader

Black Fridays
Michael Sears
(Putnam)
A Man and His Autistic Son
And the Horrors of Wall StreetYour Heart Will Break
Field Notes from
A Zen Life
James Ishmael Ford
(Wisdom)
A Slim Volume of Thoughts
About Soto Zen

In the Heart Of the Sea[G]
The Tragedy of The Whaleship Essex
Nathaniel Philbrick
(Viking)
Several Sailors Adrift in the
South Pacific with Nothing to Eat
(But Each Other)

To a Friend About to Enter Hospital
For Major Surgery for The First Time
C. A. Amantea
[Article]
Thoughtson the Horrors
Of the Initial Geezer Hospital Trip

The FBI Joins the Investigation
David Handler
[Reading]
From The Snow White Christmas Cookie

A Zen Story
James Ishmael Ford
[Reading]
From If You Are Lucky, Your Heart Will Break

What I Did Not Tell Anyone
Kate Gale
[Poem]
"I felt like Russia
During All the Wars"

Issue #234
www.ralphmag.org/HH/indexHH.html
Late Winter 2012 - 2013

Paintings from Bali
Ferlinghetti
The Last of the Just
Cryptic Letters from Andriana
And Ms. Birdford
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Best Books of 2012
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Our Selection of the
Best Books of this Year

Discovering Totem Poles
A Traveler's Guide
Aldona Jonaitis
(University of Washington /
Douglas & McIntyre)
Fifty Examples of the Tetem Poles
in Washington, Canada, and Alaska

Following Tommy
Bob Hartley
(Cervená Barva Press)
A Novel of Chicago Gang LIfe
From the 1950s & 1960s

American Copia
An Immigrant Epic
Javier O. Huerta
(Arte/Publico Press /
University of Houston)
A Paean of Praise for
American Supermarkets

Battleborn Stories
Claire Vaye Watkins
(Riverhead)
Nine Short Stories
Including One about the Man
Who Pimped for Charles Manson

Walking the Amazon
860 Days, One Step at a Time
Ed Stafford
(Plume)
Over Two Years
Walking Down the Amazon River

Eyewitness to World War II
Unforgettable Stories and
Photographs from History's Greatest Conflict
Neil Kagan
Stephen G. Hyslop
(National Geographic)
A Pictorial History of WWII

Resurrection Express
A Thriller
Stephen Romano
(Gallery)
A Young Thief
And His Father

Ant Encounters
Interaction, Networks and
Colony Behavior
Deborah M. Gordon
(Princeton)
An Artistic Study of How Ants
Negotiate the World

Posters of the Canadian Pacific[G]
Marc H. Choko
David L. Jones
(Firefly)
A Rich Study of the Past
Through Canadian Railroad Posters

I Was Forcibly Sterilized
By the State of North Carolina
And All I Got
Was This Lousy T-Shirt
Mike Ervin
[Article]
How Eugenics Ruled North Carolina for
Over Thirty Years

Right-orooni
Jack Kerouac
(Reading)
Slim Gaillard at his Best

Peanut Butter
Eileen Myers
(Poem)
Peanut Butter and Unrequited Love

Issue #235
www.ralphmag.org/HI/indexHI.html
Early Spring 2013

Paintings from Bali
Slim Gaillard
Following Tommy
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog
Snob
Chinese Encyclopedia
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Please&Play
I am very glade
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

A Dozen Photography Books
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Twelve of Our Favorite
Books on Photography

The Best American Magazine Writing 2012
Sid Holt, Editor
(Columbia University Press)
An Anthology of Nineteen Essays and Stories
From Sixteen Different Magazines

Cardiff before Cardiff
Keith S. Robertson Jon Pountney
(Y Lolfa Talybont Ceredigion)
A Collection of Photographs of that City
From the 1970s Combined with
Newer Black-and-White Shots

Picturing the Cosmos
The Hubble Space Telescope Images
And the Astronomical Sublime
Elizabeth A. Kessler
(University of Minnesota Press)
How Photographs from the Hubble Telescope
Are Dolled Up Before We See Them

The Polish Boxer
Eduardo Halfon
(Bellevue Literary Press)
A Man Transfixed by Gypsies

Swimming Home*
Deborah Levy
(Bloomsbury)
A Novel of Poets and Poets Lovers Living (and Dying)
One Summer near Nice

The Life of An Unknown Man*
Andreï Makine
(Graywolf Press)
A Writer Returns to Russia to Find
That Russia Has Changed,
Perhaps Left Him Behind

Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog[G]
The Quirky History and Lost Art
of Diagramming Sentences
Kitty Burns Florey
(Harvest)
Diagramming: How to Do It
(And How to Love It)

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky In India[G]
Lolita Lark
[Article]
How One of the Great Mystics of the Past
Lived and Traveled through India (1885)

Licensing Your Baby
Heather Kien Lanier
[Reading]
Why Don't They Make Us Have
A License to Make a Baby?

Ant Surprises
Deborah M. Gordon
[Reading]
Strange and Wonderful Things
The Lowly Ant Can Do

Twelve Great Poetry Books
The Editors
[List]
Twelve Great Books of Verse
That Have Come in to RALPH
Over the Years

Issue #236
www.ralphmag.org/HJ/indexHJ.html
Mid-Spring 2013

Paintings from Bali
The Horse Whisperer
Let's talk more my bunny!
Letters We Never Finished Reading
$500,000.00
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

University Press Demands
RALPH Remove Review
[Letter]
TTUP
Claims a Review We Published Is
"disparaging to rural and urban Texans alike."

Twelve Great Nonfiction Books
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Reviews of a Dozen of Our
Favorite Recent Nonfiction Books

Things that Are*
Essays
Amy Leach
(Milkweed Editions)
Otherworldly Thoughts on Such Things as
Moons, Beavers, Popes, Alligators, Donkeys

What They Do In the Dark*
A Novel
Amanda Coe
(Norton)
Life in a Yorkshire Viillage
After the Movie-Makers Come to Town

Travels with Bertha
Two Years Exploring Australia
In a 1978 Ford Stationwagon
Paul Martin
(Liberties Press)
A Tour --- Slow, Sometimes Painful ---
Through the Far Reaches of Australia

Taliesin Diary
A Year with Frank Lloyd Wright
Priscilla J Henken
(Norton)
Revelations -- -Some Strange
Some Awful --- of Life
In a Commune of the Master

The White House
An Illustrated Architectural History
Patrick Phillips-Schrock
(McFarland & Co.)
Things You Might Want to
Not Know about the Executive Mansion

Gandharan Buddhist Reliquaries
David Jongeward, et al
(Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project
University of Washington)
A Large, Beautiful Volume
Of the Shapes and Secrets
Of the Resting Places of
The Bones of Buddha

Seeing the New South
Race and Place in the Photographs
Of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
Patricia Bellis Bixel
John David Smither
(University of South Carolina Press)
Ninety Photographs of the Old South
By an Old Southerner

The Tragic History of The Sea [G]
C. R. Boxer
Josiah Blackmore
(Minnesota)
Seven Astounding Tragedies of
Shipwrecks through the Ages

Just Say Neigh
(To Horse d'Oeuvres)
Dr. Phage
[Article]
The Current Controversy over
Horse-Meat (and the Possible
Advantages of Consuming It for
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and
After-Theatre Snack)

Donkey Derby
Amy Leach
[Reading]
Thoughts on a Race Between
You and the Burros

My Black Cat
Clare Marx Arce
[Poem]
Old Song about
Small Cats and Beauty

Did You See?
She Had Flowers Up Her Nose
Emma St. James
[Poem]
Madness and Death

* = A Book Our Editors Believe
To be of Special Merit
[G] = Great Reviews of the Past

Issue #237
www.ralphmag.org/HK/indexHK.html
Late Spring 2013

The White House
Insults to Texans
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Pet Blowing Machine

The Readers of RALPH

[Letters]

Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Great Translations
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Dozen Translations that
We've Come to Love
Over the Years

Philip Larkin:
The Complete Poems
Archie Burnett, Editor
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Three Hundred Poems by the Arch-Cynic

The Color of Hay
The Peasants of Maramures
Kathleen Laraía McLaughlin
H. Woods McLaughlin
(H L Books)
Photographs of a Dying Peasantry
From Upper Middle Romania

Drinking with Men
A Memoir
Rosie Schaap
(Riverhead Books)
The Pleasures of Bar-Hopping
For a Single Lady on Her Own

Scenes from Early Life
Philip Hensher
(Fourth Estate)
Growing up in Bangla Desh
(Before It Was Bangla Desh)

News from Heaven
The Bakerton Stories
Jennifer Haigh
(HarperCollins)
Ten Short Stories from
A Burnt-Out Mining Town

Forged
Why Fakes Are
The Great Art of Our Age
Jonathon Keats
(Oxford)
Six Great Forgers and How They
Changed the Art World Forever

Script and Scribble
The Rise and Fall of Handwriting
Kitty Burns Florey
(Melville House)
A Study of Handwriting Through the Ages

My Escapee
Stories
Corinna Vallianatos
(Massachusetts)
Ten Stories of Women
Man-Handled by Men

They Can't Hide Us Anymore [G]
Richie Havens
(Spike)
The Autobiography of
The Singer of "Freedom"

The Privileged Cat
H. Woods McLaughlin
[Reading]
b The Order of Privilege of Animals
On a Typical Farm

The Pakistani Taxi Driver
Rosie Schaap
[Reading]
Being Drunk and Being Saved (Fortuitously)
by a Good Taxi Driver

Black Earth City
Charlotte Hobson
[Reading]
Gypsies in the Russian City of Voronezh

Toad
Rag & Bone
Norman MacCaig
[Poetry]
Two by the Great Scot's Poet

Issue #238
www.ralphmag.org/HL/indexHL.html
Early Summer 2013

Alain Badiou and Saint Paul
La fondation de l'universalisme
Ethel Merston
Gertrude Bell
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Frogs
$$$ in Afghanistan
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Mighty Man
Dully Yours
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Why O Why?
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Dozen Paradoxes-of-the-Month
From the Past Pages of RALPH

Oil*
Gavin Bridge,
Philippe Le Billon
(Polity)
Countless Facts about Petroleum:
Where It Started,
Where It Is Taking Us

Thomas Brock:
Forgotten Sculptor of
The Victoria Memorial
Frederick Brock
(Victoria and Albert Museum)
The History of a
Forgotten Sculptor Who
Is Better Off, Perhaps, Forgotten

The Mermaid of Brooklyn*
A Novel
Amy Shearn
(Touchstone)
A Novel for Those Who Might Be
Thinking about Having Babies,
But Aren't Too Sure

Black Earth City
Charlotte Hobson
(Picador)
A British Student in Voronezh in 1991-92
Right After the Fall of Communism

Story of a Secret State
My Report to the World
Jan Karski
(Georgetown University Press)
The Autobiography of the Young Pole
Who Was One of the First
To Tell the Truth about Nazism

Fine Bonsai:*
Art & Nature
William N. Valavanis
Jonathan M. Singer, Photographer
(Abbeville Press Publishers)
A Weighty (and Glorious) Treasure-Trove
Of 300 Tiny Trees

Postmodern American Poetry
A Norton Anthology
Paul Hoover, Editor
(Norton)
114 poets, 583 poems from
Post-WWII America

The Woman of Porto Pim*
Antonio Tabucchi
(Archipelago Books)
A Touching Memoir of
The Azores and
The Whales

Nights in the Pink Motel [G]
An American Strategist's
Pursuit of Peace in Iraq
(Naval Institute Press)
Robert Earle (Naval Institute Press)
A Fascinating Study (in Novelistic Form)
Of One Man's Struggle to
Get Us Out of the Iraqi Quagmire

The Kitty Inquisition
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Four Centuries of the Roman Catholic
Ordered Persecution of Cats and Dogs and
The Unintended Consequences Thereof

Interrogation and Suicide
The Polish Typhoid Mary
Jan Karski
[Reading]
Excerpts from
Story of a Secret State

Personal Poem
Frank O'Hara
[Poem]
Memories of Being Poor
In New York City

E-Mail You
Walter F. Sargent
[Poem]
Love and the Frustrations of the Internet

What Was It about
That Sweet Summer of 2006?
The Readers of RALPH
[List]
The Most Favored Old Issue of RALPH

Issue #239
www.ralphmag.org/HM/indexHM.html
Mid-Summer 2013

John Barth
Kitty Burns Florey
Robert Earle
Nights in the Pink Motel
Paradoxes
Edward R. Murrow
Women and The Mexican Revolution
Why do not you write?
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen Hits
The Readers of RALPH
[List]
Our Readers Most Favored Reviews, Articles,
Poems and Reviews from the Pages of RALPH

New Selected Poems*
Les Murray
(Carcanet Press)
Over Three Hundred Poems from
The Australian Anti-Modernist

A Straight Road
With 99 Curves*
Coming of Age on the Path of Zen
Gregory Shepherd
(Stone Bridge Press)
An Innocent American Stoner
Decides to Journey on the Way

New Deal Photographs
Of West Virginia 1934 - 1943
Betty Rivard, Editor
(West Virginia University Press)
Great --- and often Sad
Black and White Images
from the Coal Fields

Wet*
Poems
Carolyn Creedon
(Kent State University Press)
Poems, Reality, the Here-and-Now
By One of the American Masters

The Last Frontier
Exploring Afterlife and
Transforming Death
Julia Assante
(New World Library)
An Extended Look at that Weird Place
Where We All Have to Go (When It's Time
To Hang It Up)

Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
Neville Jason, Reader
(Naxos Audiobooks)
Hardy's Last, and Most Confounding, Novel

Maya Architecture
Temples in the Sky
Kenneth Treister
(University Press of Florida)
The Known and Unknown Temples
from 1000 Years Ago ---
Illustrated and Described

Reinventing Bach
Paul Elie
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A Thorough Examination of Bach's Recordings, and
Those Who Have Dared to Record Him

Shostakovich Symphonies and Concertos: [G]
An Owner's Manual David Hurwitz
(Amadeus Press)
Shostakovich and His Fearful Life
Under Josef Stalin

Vassar Clements Sure Didn't
Know Much About Cripples
Mike Ervin
[Article]
Mike Ervin Uses His Wheelchair
To Get Behind the Curtain

Who Beats Your Heart?
L. W. Milam
[Article]
Our Hero Finds a New Toy --- A Pacemaker ---
(Being Laid Next to What's Left of His Heart)

The Grave Mother
Marilynne Robinson
[Reading]
Left Alone By Her Strange Mother
After the Mastectomy
Meredith Norton
[Reading] T
o Lose a Breast

Learning To Read (Passionately)
Amos Oz
[Reading]
Being Subsumed by The Word

Derrick Asks to
See My Horns
Kevin Coval
[Poem]
"it is 1993."

Ode to the Gefilte Fish
Kevin Coval
[Poem]
"this flawed, lovely creation
tastes so much like home.
bitter. sweet.

* = A Book Our Editors Believe
To be of Special Merit
[G] = Great Reviews of the Past

Issue #240
www.ralphmag.org/HN/indexHN.html
Late Summer 2013

J. S. Bach and Wagner
Rockefeller the Titan
This Bloody Life
William Quesenbury:
A Defenseless Punching Bag?

The Readers of RALPH

[Letters] Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Great Audio Books
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Dozen Beautiful Books Read Beautifully

Hoosh*
Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and
Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine
Jason C. Anthony
(Nebraska)
Things Your Would Never Dream of Eating
Served Hot (and Cold) at the South Pole

Revenge
Eleven Dark Tales
Yoko Ogawa
(Picador)
Spooky Stuff Happening in the
Most Unspooky Settings

Mango and Mint
Arabian, Indian, and
North African Inspired Cuisine
Nicky Garratt
(PM Press)
Two hundred recipes including hummus, curry, pilafs,
and a selection of pickles, chutneys, and soups.

The Book of Time
The Secrets of Time,
How It Works, and
How We Measure It
Adam Hart-Davis
(Firefly)
Everything You Could Ever Never Want to Know about
That Which Is Pushing us Down
That Long Lonely Road

Vanity Fair*
William Makepeace Thackeray
Read by Georgina Sutton
(Naxos Audiobooks)
A Twenty-Five Disc Romp
Through Early 19th Century England
(With All Its Rogues, Layabouts, Social Climbers and Innocents)

Karl Bodmer's America Revisited
Landscape Views Across Time
W. Raymond Wood, Robert M Lindholm
(Oklahoma)
A 3,000 Mile Trip Across
Early 19th Century America with Artist Karl Bodmer and His Patron

New California Writing --- 2013
Gayle Wattawa, Kirk Glaser, Editors
(Heyday/Santa Clara University) Over Forty Stories, Poems,
Articles and Readings

The Castle[G]
A New Translation
Mark Harman
(Schocken)
A New (and Even More Tedious)
Rendering of the Master of the Grim

The Death of Jesús
C. A. Amantea
[Article]
Another Story of the Death of One Who (Perhaps)
Should Have Lived Far Longer

A Petition on Behalf of Saddam Hussein
C. A. Amantea
[Article]
A Wry Suggestion on the Reasons
Hussein Might Have Been Spared

In the Bakery
Yoko Ogawa
[Reading]
A Snippet from Revenge

Eating Your Transport
Jason C. Anthony
[Reading]
The Unhappy Fates of the Dogs
Who Transport Their Masters So Faithfully

Two Poems of Battle
Siegfried Sassoon
[Poems]
The Real World War One

Issue #241
www.ralphmag.org/HO/indexHO.html
Early Fall 2013

Bach Transcriptions
Karin Fossum
Don't Look Now
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Improving RALPH's Business Image
Mysterious Letters from the East
She Said That You Are Death
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twenty Great Poems
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Selections from the 600 Poems
Previously Published at RALPH

Equilateral*
A Novel
Ken Kalfus
(Bloomsbury)
A Famous Astronomer from 100 Years Ago
Tries to Make Contact with the Martians

Miss Lonelyhearts*
Nathanael West
(New Directions)
A New Edition of the Woes of Being
A Columnist for the Lonely and Dispossessed

Vulgar Remedies
Poems
Anna Journey
(Louisiana State University)
Poems of Folklore, Farming, Dreams
with Three Sonnets to Ambien

Refugee Hotel
Gabriele Stabile
Juliet Linderman
(Voice of Witness/ McSweeney's Books)
150 Photographs Plus Personal Memories of
Arriving in America as a Refugee

People, Parasites, And Plowshares
Learning from Our Body's
Most Terrifying Invaders
Dickson D. Despommier
(Columbia)
Tapeworms, Guinea Worms, River Blindness,
Malaria, and Other Dismal Parasites

The Dark Path
A Memoir David Schickler
(Riverhead )
Growing Up as the Man
Who Would Be Priest

The California Driving Handbook
A Novel
Edmund G. Brown, Governor
(DMV)
A Strange and Moving Tale
Of the Man Who Would Be
The Perfectly Driven Driver

Broken Land [G]
Poems of Brooklyn
Julia Spicher Kasdorf
Michael Tyrell, Editors
(New York University Press)
Poems from 1666 to the Present Day
From and About Brooklyn

Studying Russian
Studying Russians
Jane Resh Thomas
Dr. Phage [Articles]
Thoughts on the History of Russia And the Vagaries of the Russian People

Lie, Lie, Lie [G]
How I Wrote the School
of Beauty and Charm
Melanie Summer
[Reading]
A Memoir of a Writer
Growing up in Rome, Georgia

The Red Star
The Hot Air Balloon Ken Kalfus
[Readings]
Two Selections from
Equilateral

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts
Nathanael West
[Reading]
A Letter from One Enraged
(And Puzzled) by Life

Sea Hag
Carley Moore
[Poem]
On the Wife Who
"Pecks Your Eyes Out"

Issue #242
www.ralphmag.org/HP/indexHP.html
Mid-Fall 2013

Equilateral
The Collyer Brothers
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Barging a Message (In Your Mailbox)
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Youthful Folly
(A Dozen Great Novels)
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of Our Favorites
From Five Years Ago

Somehow*
Living on Uganda Time
Douglas Cruickshank
(Verflectin Media)
Three Hundred Great Photos ---
With Commentary ---
On Modern Uganda Village Life

Levels of Life*
Julian Barnes
(Alfred A Knopf)
A Meditation on Hot-Air Balloons ---
And the Death of a Dear One

Madame Bovary*
Provincial Morals
Gustave Flaubert
Adam Thorpe, Translator
(Modern Library)
A New Translation of the Classic
She Loves Him She Bores Him Novel

Heading Out To Wonderful*
Robert Goolrick
Norman Dietz, Reader
(HighBridge Audio)
Another Classic Love Triangle Story
Superbly (and Deliciously) Read

Burying the Typewriter
A Memoir
Carmen Bugan
(Graywolf)
Growing Up in Romania as the Child
Of a Troublemaking Dissident Father

Upton Sinclair
California Socialist,
Celebrity Intellectual
Lauren Coodley
(University of Nebraska Press)
A Short Life of the Radical
Who Almost Became Governor

Stealing Sugar from the Castle
Selected and New Poems
1950 - 2013 Robert Bly
(Norton)
Three Hundred Poems from
The Author of Iron John

Monologue Of a Dog [G]
Wislawa Szymborska
Clare Cavanagh Stanislaw Baranczak Translators
(Harcourt)
Some Great Poems from
The Nobel Prize Winner

Under the Skin [G]
Michael Faber
(Harcourt)
The Alien Invasion (of Scotland!)
Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture

The Seal Hotel
Jon Gallant
[Article]
Dreaming of Japanese City Planes
And Seals Running a Hotel

Animal Quackers
L. W. Milam
[Article]
Growing Up with Giant
Indian Runner Ducks

Dying, Death, Grief
Julian Barnes
[Reading]
The Death of One Very Near and Dear

A Man and His Daughter
Robert Goolrick
[Reading]
Selling Your Daughter
To the Highest Bidder

"Saltpetre and Robert Frost"
"Cartalk"
Jack McCarthy
[Poetry]
Two by the Beat Poet Of New England

Issue #243
www.ralphmag.org/HQ/indexHQ.html
Late Fall 2013

Scabies Baby
On The Essence and
Matrix of the Universe-Life
5ft bah tubs
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Reviews, Readings and Poems
That Get the Greatest Number of Hits Each Month

Glittering Images
A Journey through Art
From Egypt to Star Wars
Camille Paglia
(Vintage)
Almost Thirty Artists
Illustrated and Described

Mommyblogs*
And the Changing Face
of Motherhood
May Friedman
(University of Toronto Press)
Four Huge Blogs and
Thousands of Smaller Ones
Are Changing Love (and Hate) in Motherhood

The Old Priest*
Stories
Anthony Wallace
(University of Pittsburgh)
Nine Often Very Funny
Stories about Blackjack Dealers
And Old Gay Priests (and Dinosaurs)

The Roy Stories*
Barry Gifford
(Seven Stories Press)
Dozens and Dozens of Stories about
Growing up in Chicago
Nuts on the Streets and
A Loving but Absent Mother

My Life as a Silent Movie
A Novel
Jesse Lee Kercheval
(Break Away Books)
Ivan Mosjoukine, the Great Russian Silent Screen
Movie Star, Sprinkled His Children around like
Seeds on the Steppes
So They Come Back and Haunt Him

Thirteen Cents
K. Sello Duiker
(Ohio University Press)
Duiker Is Showed to Be
A Great but Largely Unknown
South African Author

Astronomical Enigmas [G]
Life on Mars,
The Star of Bethlehem &
Other Milky Way Mysteries
Mark Kidger
(Johns Hopkins)
Scores of Strange and Wonderful Facts
About Our Own Milky Way

State Houses: [G]
America's 50 State Houses
Susan Thrane
Tom Patterson,
Photographer
(Boston Mills Press)
All of Them Are Shown
And Our Reviewer Reviews
Them All
Pistol Packin' Momma
L. W. Milam
[Article]
Some Thoughts on
Childish Hi-Jinx and
The Second World War

Poisoning the Neighbor's Dogs
Anthony Wallace
[Reading]
Getting Rid of Those Barks at Night

Blue People
Barry Gifford
[Reading]
A Shaggy-Dog Story
About How to Dye Your Clothes
(and You) Blue

Night Owl
Barry Gifford
[Reading]
Another Story from The Roy Stories

A Tonight's Lecture
The McPoem
Ronald Wallace
[Poems]
Two Great Old Poems From the RALPH Vaults

Issue #244
www.ralphmag.org/HR/indexHR.html
Early Winter 2013

The New Folio
Getting Locked in the Looney Ward
STOP CONTACTING THOSE PEOPLE
There'll Always Be an England
Cat-on-Shoulder Division
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen Stars
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Best of Novels,
Non-Fiction, and Poetry Books
Received and Reviewed during 2013

Wm & H'ry
Literature, Love, and the Letters
Between William and Henry James
J. C. Hallman
(University of Iowa Press)
Thoughts about the Correspondence
Between the James Brothers

Civil Wars*
Poems
David Slavitt
(Louisiana State University Press)
Poems about turtles, civil wars, combs,
spies, harmonicas, baseball, dancing bears,
insomnia, and revolving doors.

Lines in Long Array
A Civil War Commemoration
David C. Ward
Frank H. Goodyear, Editors
(National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Books)
Twelve Poems from Now,
and Twelve from Back Then
With Appropriate Pictures

The Science of Herself*
Karen Joy Fowler
(PM Press)
Several Essays along with an
Interview of the Outspoken Fowler

The Faithful Scribe
A Story of Islam,
Pakistan, Family, and War
Shahan Muft
(Other Press)
Born and Education in the U.S. and In Pakistan
Mufti Tries to Heal the Split

Into the Night*
Tales of Nocturnal
Wildlife Expeditions
Rick A. Adams, Editor
(University Press of Colorado) V
ery Funny Real Life Stories of
Tracking Fruitbats, Mountain Chickens, and
Walking Batfish

Three Women in a Mirror
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
(Europa Editions)
A Sixteenth Century Saint Who
Inspired Followers from the 20th and 21st Centuries

In the Pleasure Groove
Love, Death & Duran Duran
John Taylor
(Plume)
One of the Band's Founders
Confesses All

Shooting Under Fire[G]
The World of the
War Photographer
Peter Howe
(Artisan)
Over a Hundred Horrific Photographs
From the Killing Fields

The English Is Coming![G]
How One Language Is
Sweeping the World
Leslie Dunton-Downer
(Touchstone)
Facts of the Language that
Is Taking Over the World

The Evening the World Ended
Dr. Phage
[Article]
A Typical Night at the AA Meeting

God Vs. Gawd[G]
A. W. Allworthy
[Article]
How the Two Gods Are
Taking over the United States

The House Is Sleeping
A Dying Wife
Angel Igov
[Readings]
Two Readings from the Superb Novel
A Short Tale of Shame

Salida de Emergencia
Raimon de Roussilon
David R. Slavitt
[Poems]
Two from Civil Wars

Issue #245
www.ralphmag.org/HS/indexHS.html
Mid-Winter 2013 - 2014

Penguin Aux Gousses D'ail
Pest Control at RALPH

Letters We Never Finished Reading
Your $500,000
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Hit Pix
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Those Drawings, Pictures and
Photographs that Get the Greatest
Number of Hits Each Month

Firefly*
Janette Jenkins
(Europa Editions)
A Novel about the Last Years of Noël Coward

Allegiance and Betrayal
Stories
Peter Makuck
(Syracuse)
Twelve Stories about
People Floating through Life
With Endless Gin-and-Tonics in their Hands

A Short Tale of Shame*
Angel Igov
(Open Letter)
An Odd Novel about an Odd Trip through Thrace:
An Ex-Rocker and Three College Students

The Round House
Louise Erdrich
(Harper Perennial)
Growing Up and Rape and
Murder in Objibwe Territory

Snow Hunters
Paul Yoon
(Random House)
A Soldier from North Korea
Ends Up in Brazil

Glorious Misadventures
Nikolai Rezanov and
The Dream of Russian America
Owen Matthews
(Bloomsbury)
Early 19th Century Attempts by
Russia to Conquer Alaska and
The Pacific Northwest

The Story of a New Name
The Neapolitan Novels: Book Two
Elena Ferrante
(Europa Editions)
Several Neopolitan Families in
Love and Hate (and Seduction)

Five Old New Titles[G]
William Carlos Williams, et al
(New Directions, University of Oklahoma, etc.)
Five New Titles from 2009 - 2010

Owls[G]
Cynthia Berger
(Stackpole)
Some Fairly Disgusting Insights
About Those Lovely Night Birds

Madness[G]
A Bipolar Life Marya Hornbacher
(Mariner)
One of Our Earlier Hit Reviews
About Anorexia and Bulemia

Jean-Paul Sartre
Dr. Phage / C. A. Amantea
[Article]
An Improbable Biography of
The Improbable Existentialist

Among Russians
Among Russians II
Colin Thubron
[Readings]
A Trip through the Last Days
of Stalinist Russia

Two Visits in One Day,
March 16 [1996]
Hal Sirowit
David Lehman
[Poetry]
Four Poems from Word of Mouth

Issue #246
www.ralphmag.org/HT/indexHT.html
Late Winter 2013 2014

Blue Days, Black Nights
Love Sweeting Not Sweating
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Now u know the alphabet
The Hospital in Comma
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

A Heap of Paradoxes
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A droll statement, an obscure fact, an elusive epigram ---
that should serve to perplex if not enlighten our readers and ourselves.

Monkey Mind*
A Memoir of Anxiety
Daniel Smith
(Simon & Schuster)
Years and years of panic attacks
caused by a vicious rape.

Hawthorn & Child*
Keith Ridgway
(New Directions)
A very odd detective story,
that should end up convicting the killer,
but instead, may convict the detectives.

Going Home
A Novel of Survival
A. American
(Plume)
A prepper, making his way through Florida
After the American infrastructure has gone AWOL.

Visit Sunny Chernobyl*
And Other Adventures in
The World's Most Polluted Places
Andrew Blackwell
(Rodale)
Touristy visits to Chernobyl, Alberta,
Port Arthur and four other disastervilles

Capturing the Light
The Birth of Photography,
A True Story of Genius and Rivalry
Roget Watson, Helen Rappaport
(St. Martin's Press)
Two rather odd gentlemen,
In 1830s-1840s Europe
Striving to capture an image
Perhaps of themselves.

A Chronicle of Jazz*
Mervyn Cooke
(Oxford)
An extremely detailed and lovely picture
of jazz from the beginning of the 20th Century
until now.

The Best American Magazine Writing --- 2013
James Bennet, Editor
(Columbia)
Eighteen essays, articles, stories, and other ephemera
Drawn form the most popular magazines in America

When Cripples Get Arrested
Mike Ervin
[Article]
They don't send in the paddy-wagons
For disabled picketers --- they just
Give them traffic tickets. Here's why.

Working in a Chinese Computer Destruction Factory
Andrew Blackwell
[Reading]
The author visits a home factory for dismantling computers
In one of the most polluted parts of China.

The End of Slavery
Charles C. Mann
[Reading]
One of the great capital-intensive markets
Which was closed down in but five years.

The Decline Of Violence
Charles C. Mann
[Reading]
The coming, scarcely noticed, of the end
Of virulent wars and the random destruction of whole peoples.

When You Return
Ellen Bass
[Poetry]
A poem of love for the missing
Feldwebel Zorn's Motorcycle
Senaden Musabegovic
[Poetry]
Another poem of love gone missing.

My Mother Wears Combat Boots[G]
A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us
Jessica Mills
(AK)
A mother guide for the now generation.

Written Lives[G]
Javier Marías
(New Directions)
Nabokov, Kenneth Rexroth, D. H. Lawrence,
Umberto Eco described, precisely and beautifully

[G] Great Reviews (or Articles) from the Past
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention

Issue #247
www.ralphmag.org/HU/indexHU.html
Early Spring 2014

My Bloody Life
Bob Poole & Poole's Paradise
The Tale of an Old Bay Fisherman
Offer to Buy RALPH!!!
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Oddest Books
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Selection of Titles
That We've Received
Over the Years
That Some May Consider a Bit Strange

1914*
A Novel
Jean Echenoz
(The New Press)
The Terrible First Months of WWI

A Sense Sublime
Richard Quinney
(Borderland Books)
Meditation (with Simple, Elegant Photographs)
On Living in the Modern Rural Middle West.

The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
Stanley Corngold
Translator and Editor
(Modern Library)
Wretched Excess in the Form of a Great Story
Dolled Up with What the Kids Call "TMI."

Poets Translate Poets
A Hudson Review Anthology
Paula Deitz, Editor
(Syracuse University Press)
Twenty-five Different Languages Represented in
Over Two Hundred Poems.

Sex Is Forbidden*
A Novel
Tim Parks
(Arcade)
A Vamp Takes Over a Buddhist Retreat.

Counterclockwise*
My Year of Hypnosis, Hormones,
Dark Chocolate, and Other Adventures in
The World of Anti-Aging
Lauren Kessler
(Rodale)
The Author Spends a Year Learning to
Try to Put off the Inevitable.

Riverbanks Zoo and Garden
Forty Wild Years
Palmer "Satch" Krantz and
Monique Blanchette Jacobs
(The University of South Carolina Press)
Putting Together an Entire Zoo (from Scratch).

The Chrysler Building[G]
Creating a New Icon
Day by Day
David Stravitz
(Princeton Architectural)
Old Photographs Reveal how
The Great Building Was Done.

Pushing the Limits:[G]
New Adventures in Engineering
Henry Petroski
(Knopf)
Some of the Most Repulsive
Structures in the World Deified.

My Bloody Life[G]

The Making of a Latino King
Reymundo Sanchez
(Chicago Review Press)
A Young Latino on the Streets of Chicago
Becoming Part of the 'Hood.

Why Is Beethoven So Different?
Jon Gallant
[Article]
Trying to Figure Our What Separates
Beethoven from Haydn and Mozart.

The Deserter
Jean Echenoz
[Reading]
A Young Soldier in 1914
Accused of Deserting the Front.

In Siberia
Colin Thubron
[Reading]
Eastern Russia after the Latest Economic "Reform."

Gringolandia
A Guide for
Puzzled Mexicans
Jon Gallant
L. W. Milam
[Reading]
This Side of the Border
Explained for the Innocent.

Pity the Lady
Diana Boernstein
[Poem]
Madness and the Moths.

Obituary Weldon Kees
[Poem]
The Death of Boris the Parrot

[G] Great Reviews (or Articles) from the Past
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention

Issue #248
www.ralphmag.org/HV/indexHV.html
Mid-Spring 2014

Getting Shortlisted
Civil Wars
Kinda Talking, Kinda Wanting
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Mind Your Transactions
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Stars
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A List of Some of the Best New Books
That Have Come into Our Offices
Over the Last Six to Eight Months

The Antidote
Inside the World of New Pharma
Barry Werth
(Simon & Schuster)
A Look inside an Upcoming Pharma Company
To Understand the Trials and Tribulations
Of Bringing a New Drug to Market

Inside the Rainbow*
Russian Children's Literature 1920 - 1935:
Beautiful Books, Terrible Times
Julian Rothenstein,
Olga Budashevskaya,
Editors
(Redstone Press)
The High Years of
Soviet Children's Literature
(With Great Pictures)

Gold*
The Race for the World's
Most Seductive Metal
Matthew Hart
(Simon & Schuster)
The Brief and Pungent Story of
The Search for Gold
Then and Now

All Men Are Brothers
Mohandas K. Gandhi
(Bloomsbury)
Several Hundred Excerpts of
Gandhi's Writings and Speeches
On Topics
Ranging from Birth Control
To Murder and War

The Hungry Eye
Poems of Food & Drink
Kevin Young
(Bloomsbury)
A Hundred or So Poems All Having ---
Presumably --- to Do with
Eating and Drinking

The United States of Paranoia
A Conspiracy Theory
Jesse Walker
(Harper)
Everything You Didn't Want to Know
About America's Real and Mythical Operations
Against Its Own Citizens

Proof of Heaven
A Neurosurgeon's Journey
Into the Afterlife
Eben Alexander, M. D.
(Simon & Schuster)
A Doctor's Own Journey
Into the Other World

A Long Way from Verona*
A Novel
Jane Gardam
(Europa Editions)
What It's Like to Be 12-Going-on-13
(And Too Smart for Your Own Good)

The Empty Chair
Two Novellas
Bruce Wagner
(Blue Rider/Penguin)
Two Stories About Westerners Besotted
With Matters Out of the East

The Practical Guide to Aging[G]
What Everyone
Needs to Know
Christine K. Cassel, Editor
(New York University)
Too Much about What You Shouldn't
Even Think about Knowing
About Death and Dying

Abbott Awaits[G]
A Novel
Chris Bachelder
(Louisiana State University Press)
A Fine Tale about Raising a Child

Lady Di, This Is Burger King
And Batman, Meet Harry Potter ---
And His Side-Kick, Scrotum
[Article]
(The Editors)
Recent Moves to Limit the Choice
Of Names for the Newly Arrived

Joining the Navy
Suzanne McMinn
[Reading]
What to Do When Your Son
Announces that He Is about
To Join a Submarine Crew

The Monster at The End of this Book
Jesse Walker
[Reading]
The Varieties of Conspiracies
(Real and Imagined)
In the US

The Philosophy Of Consciousness
Thomas Metzinger
[Reading]
What Do You Think When
You Think about Consciousness
For a Living

The Bell from Europe
Weldon Kees
[Poem]
The Various Songs
Of the Bells of Europe

Song of Resignation
Yehuda Amichai
[Poem]
How to Surrender after You've
Looked into Your Son's Eyes
(and Seen Your Own
Looking Back at You)

Obituary
Weldon Kees
[Poem]
The Death of Boris the Parrot

Issue #249
www.ralphmag.org/HW/indexHW.html
Late Spring 2014

The Wrath of God!
Edible Gelatin
Forgive my indignation
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twenty-One Beautiful Pages
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Compilation of Those Pages that
Our Editors Believe to be the Most Comely

Chickens in the Road*
An Adventure in Ordinary Splendor
Suzanne McMinn
(Harper One)
In which Our Writer Leaves the Big City
and Settles in a Godforsaken Corner of
West Virginia --- and Prospers

This Place, These People
Life and Shadow on the Great Plains
Nancy Warner, David Stark
(Columbia University Press) A
Visit (in Words, in Photographs)
To a Dying Village on the Plains

Junkyard Planet
Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade
Adam Minter
(Bloomsbury)
He Grows Up in a Junkyard, and now
Explores the New Frontiers of Junkery

The Severed Head
Capital Visions
Julia Kristeva
(Columbia University Press)
An Extended Study of the Separation
of Head from Body

On the Cancer Frontier
One Man, One Disease,
And a Medical Revolution
Paul Marks, M.D.
James Sterngold
(Public Affairs)
New Dimensions on the Frontiers
of Science: Specifically, Cancer

Men in Prison*
Victor Serge
(PM)
One of the Great Anarchist Writers on
The Reality of Prison

Black Vodka
Ten Stories
Deborah Levy
(Bloomsbury USA)
Ten Definitely Oddball Stories
Written in a Rich, Spare Style

Young Skins*
Colin Barrett
(Stinging Fly Press)
The New Ireland of Tedium,
Easy Violence, Easy Love

The Guy Davenport Reader*
Erik Reece, Editor
(Counterpoint)
Essays on Love, Secret Caves, the Odder Face
of Franz Kafka, and Great Painters

Poetry of the First World War
An Anthology
Tim Kendall
(Oxford)
Thirty English Poets Who Came from the
Crucible of the Trenches

Mozart
A Life
Paul Johnson
(Viking)
A HoHum Life of a not at all
Ho-Hum Composer

Under a Glass Bell*[B]
And Other Stories
Anais Nin
(Swallow)
The Lovely and Mysterious Nin in
Her Days on a Barge in Paris

Flyover Lives[B]
A Memoir
Diane Johnson
(Viking)
The Famed Writer in a Rather
Self- Adsorbed Recounting of Her Life

The Third Son[B]
A Novel
Julie Wu
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
An Escape from Taiwan into the
Equally Inescapable Mid-West
Of Grisélidis Réal[B][G]

Days and Nights of
An Anarchist Whore
Jean-Luc Hennig
(Semiotext(e)/MIT)
A Lady of the Night Who Has
Her Own Proper Rules

The Cost of Lunch, Etc.[B]
Short Stories
Marge Piercy
(PM)
Twenty Stories of American Life
Apparently Thrown Out at Random

Edward Lear[G]
Egyptian Sketches
Jenny Gaschke
(National Maritime Museum)
Terrific Drawings from Egypt by the
Master of Limericks

Scenes from La Cuenca de Los Angeles[G]
Y Otros Natural Disasters
Susana Chávez-Silverman
(University of Wisconsin)
An Almost BiLingual Rendering of a
Definite BiLingual Character

Belinda's World Tour
Guy Davenport
[Reading]
Franz Kafka Comes to Save Young Girl
from the Loss of Her Doll

A Boston Panic Attack
Daniel Smith
[Reading]
A Panic Attack in the Midst of
The Boston Holocaust Museum

The Life of Richard Wagner[G]
(Alfred A Knopf)
Volume One (1813-1848)
Ernest Newman
H G Mencken, Reviewer
[Reading]
One of the Early Reviews of Mencken

Landing
Eleanor Wilner
[Poem]
The Beauty of a Fallen Parachute

At the IGA --- Franklin, New Hampshire
Jane Kenyon
[Poem]
A Breakdown in
Front of the Grocery Store

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention