| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
My Best Friend's Ghost Singing Bronze: A History of Carillon Music A Letter from the Dominican Republic Flirty Chat Rooms |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Twenty Years of Great Poetry Books | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Some of the Great Books of Verse That Have Come to Us since 1994 |
| Fu-Go*
The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America |
Ross Coen | (University of Nebraska Press) | The Launching of Thousands of Gas-Fire Balloons from Japan to the United States, 1944-1945 |
| The Faulkes Chronicle | David Huddle | (Tupelo Press) | Mother is Dying of Cancer But Does It Beautifully (Literally) With the Coöperation of Her Thirty-One Children (!) |
| Hiroshima,
Nagasaki
The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath |
Paul Ham | (Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Press) | An Excellent Account of the Politics Behind (On Both Sides) that Led to The Destruction of Japanese Two Cities |
| The Burning of the World A Memoir of 1914 |
Béla Zombory-Moldován Peter Zombory-Moldován, Translator |
(New York Review Classics) | An Exact Description of the Early Days of WWI And its Effect on All Concerned |
| The Most Dangerous Book*
The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses |
Kevin Birmingham | (The Penguin Press) | The War against Ulysses and the History of "Dirty" Words in Literature |
| Copia*
Poems |
Erika Meitner | (BOA Editions Ltd) | Fine and Unusual Poems of Love (and Reality) In Modern-Day USA |
| Euphoria
A Novel |
Lily King | (Atlantic Monthly Press) | Three Anthropologists in the South Pacific Between the Wars (Between Themselves) |
| The Human Age
The World Shaped by Us | Diane Ackerman | (W. W. Norton) | The Odd Things We Are Doing to Convert the World to One of (Only) Human Beings |
| How to Be an Intellectual
Essays on Criticism, Culture, & the University |
Jeffrey J. Williams | (Fordham) | A Self-Defined "Intellectual" on Such Grim Tales as How We've Turned Our Students into a Hopeless Debtor Class |
| Advanced Rut Hunting[G] Strategies for Taking Whitetails During Prime Time | Gerald Bethge, Editor | (Lyons Press) | Methods for Bagging a Lusty Stag and Turning Him into Fresh Meat |
| The Hamburger Book | Honey and Larry Ziman | (St. Martins Press) | More Silliness than You Can Imagine About the Common Hamburger |
| From the Duchy of Moscow to Vladimir Zhirinovsky:
Russian History and Its Consequences |
Jon Gallant | [Article] | Some Astonishing Facts about Vladimir Zhirinovsky Who Wants Russia to Take Back Alaska |
| The Discovery of Other Minds | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | [Reading] | David Tucker Translates and Entrancing Passage About Waiting in the Desert --- To Be Saved; or Perhaps Killed |
| Dual Micturation in Dublin[G] |
James Joyce | [Reading] | Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus In a Late Night Pissing Contest |
| Wal-Mart Supercenter and Porto, Portare, Portavi, Portatus |
Erika Meitner | [Poetry] | Two about Shopping Centers, Miscreants, and The Job of All of Us to Consume |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Global Warming and China and India
Evil Aliens |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Fifteen Stupendous Books from 2014 | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Some of the Great Books of 2014 |
| World War I In 100 Objects | Peter Doyle | (Penguin) | One Hundred Rather Ghastly Objects That Supposedly Helped the Good Guys Win the War |
| 'Til the Well Runs Dry* A Novel | Lauren Francis-Sharma | (Henry Holt) | A Fascinating Round of Love, Incest, Family Wars, and Despair in Trinidad |
| The Legs of Izolda Morgan Selected Writings | Bruno Jasienski | (Twisted Spoon Press) | They Called Themselves the "Futurists." They Were the Dadaists of Interwar Poland and They (as Usual) Issued the Usual Manifestos |
| Island of a Thousand Mirrors A Novel | Nayomi Munaweera | (St. Martin's Press ) | The Civil War in Sri Lanka --- and, before, The Romance of Growing Up in an Island Paradise |
| Ecodeviance (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness | CAConrad | (Wave Books) | The Author Is Fond of Pulling Strings --- Then Sitting Down to Write Poems About It |
| This Life* | Karel Schoeman | (Archipelago) | A Subtle and Lovely Book about the Very Shy --- and How They Survived So Long Ago (in the Boer Country) |
| The Unloved | Deborah Levy | (Bloomsbury) | They're in a Rented Chateau in Normandy --- and in Levy Country. |
| Kinsey[G]* Sex the Measure Of All Things | Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy | (Indiana University Press) | The Fascinating History of Kinsey and All Those Sex Study Books |
| Great Folios of the Past Late Summer 2011 |
[List] | The Editors | One of the Most Popular Printed Edition of RALPH |
| The Veliki Knyaz An Episode in Russian History |
Jon Gallant | [Article] | A Historical Example of Russian Demand for Conformity. |
| Jean Genet and the Black Panthers | Edmund White | [Reading] | Jean Genet Being Jean Genet |
| How Writers Lose Their Style | David Lodge | [Reading] | When Computers Come in to Deflate the Novelist |
| The Zen Monks and The Governor | Zen Master Seung Sahn | [Reading] | The Monk in the Kitchen Teaches The Governor How to Fly |
| Maps and The Bibles of the Poor |
Marshall McLuhan1 | [Reading] | The Market in Black Market Maps |
| Ice Age | Sigitas Parulskis | [Poem] | Turning Splinters into Messages from Heaven |
| The Lice Seekers | Arthur Rimbaud | [Poem] | The Ladies Clean the Boy's Head |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes
Maybe You Are Too Bussy |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Some Odd (But Very Important) Books | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Some of the Best Revelatory Books From the Last Twenty Years |
| Face of Our Time* | August Sander | (André Deutsch) | The Noted Early 20th Century Photographer Remembered |
| An Innocent Abroad Life-Changing Trips from 35 Great Writers | Don George, Editor | (Lonely Planet) | Essays from All Over With Life-Changing Adventures |
|
Preparing the Ghost*
An Essay Concerning The Giant Squid and Its First Photographer |
Matthew Gavin Frank | (Liveright Publishing) | The History and the Giant Mysteries of the Giant Squid Explained |
| Fractured Times Culture and Society in The Twentieth Century | Eric Hobsbawm | (New Press) | The Famed (and Eloquent) Historian Explains What Is Happening to Us< And Offers Insight into Cowboys, too |
| Miruna* A Tale |
Bogdan Suceavă | (Twisted Spoon Press) | Miraculous Goings-On In the Mountains of Romania |
| Up in Here Jailing Kids on Chicago's Other Side |
Mark Dostert | (University of Iowa) | Working as a Guard in Chicago's Biggest Juvenile Facility |
|
A Useless Man* Selected Stories | Sait Faik Abasiyanik | (Archipelago Books) | Thirty-Seven Stories by the Folkish Writer Known to All in Turkey as Sait Faik |
| How to Be Both | Ali Smith | (Pantheon) | A Mysterious Italian Artist From the 15th Century And a Brilliant Girl from the Twentieth |
| The Fays | Bogdan Suceavă | [Reading] | The Carpathian Version of The Furies |
|
The Twenty-Five Truths of Life [G] | Barry Corbet --- 1935 - 2004 | [Article] | An Eulogy for the Famous Writer, Photographer and Editor |
| Death of The Dülger |
Sait Faik Abasiyanik | [Reading] | The Noisiest, Ugliest Fish in All Creation |
| The Hot Bath
Helping to Cure Rheumatism, Hypertension, and Ascites |
Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein | [Reading] | One of the Oldest Cure-Alls Explained |
| Lilith | Enid Jacob James | [Poem] | Eve's Side of the Story Explained |
| James Alley Blues[G] | Richard 'Rabbit' Brown | [Poem] | How to Love One Too Much |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum
Our Cheatin' Wives The Grand Prince of Moscow |
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 Nice Collection from Twenty Years of This Magazine's "Paradox of the Month" |
| The Possibilities | Kaui Hart Hemmings | (Simon & Schuster) | A Novel about a Boy's Death, and the Young Girl Who Appears at the Back Door, Saying She is the To-Be Mother of the Son's New Child |
| K is for Killer | Sue Grafton | (St. Martin's Griffin) | Number 11 in the Apparently Endless Series of Detective Stories by Grafton |
| Zen Encounters with Loneliness | Terrence Keenan | (Wisdom) | An Alcoholic Zen Master Relates the Details of His Addiction |
| The Empire of the Dead | Tracy Daugherty | (Johns Hopkins University) | Seven Short Stories Five about a Lonely Man in New York City |
| The Footloose AmericanTrail Across South America
Following the Hunter S. Thompson |
Brian Kevin | (Broadway Books) | Following Thompson's Trail in South America Fifty Years Ago |
| 10:04
A Novel |
Ben Lerner | (Faber & Faber) | An Up-and-Coming Novelist in New York with Hiurricane, Pregnancies, and Thoughts of Writers Writing about Writing |
| Hell and Good Company
The Spanish Civil War And the World It Made |
Richard Rhodes | (Simon & Schuster) | Heroism, Sacrifice, and the Outsiders in the Midst of that Sad War |
| Dataclysm
Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking |
Christian Rudder | (Crown) | Some Scary Facts about What You Give Up When You Join Others Online |
| Seduced by Modernity:[G]
The Photography of Margaret Watkins2 |
Mary O'Connor Katherine Tweedie Editors |
(McGill-Queens University Press) | One of the Great "Modernist" Photographers from the American Jazz Age |
| Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico[G] A Sense of Place |
Barbara Buhler Lynes Leslie Poling-Kempes Frederick W. Turner | (Princeton University Press) | The Testy O'Keeffe Being Testy to the Snobs of Santa Fe |
| Kosher Goyim | Dr. Phage | Article | A Plan to Convert the Goyim by Means of the Best Food on the Planet |
| When Rats Find Cats Alluring
Toxoplasma gondii |
Diane Ackerman | [Reading] | A New and Devilish Plague Particular to Cats and Kangaroos |
| Eskimos and The Long Winter Darkness[G] |
Jane Brox | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | How Eskimos Survived without Lights and Electricity |
| Baudelaire
1939 Baudelaire Hamburger Marcia |
Richard Brautigan | Poems | The Beat Master in Three of His Best |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Kosher Goyim
Thieves in Wheelchairs Offer from the Libyan Government |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Fifteen All-Time Hits | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | The Reviews, Articles, Poems and Readings That Get the Most Repeat Business From Our Readers |
| On Immunity*
An Inoculation |
Eula Biss | (Graywolf Press) | A Writer's Personal Trip to Discover if It Is Safe for Her to Inoculate Her Son |
| Philip Larkin
Life, Art and Love |
James Booth | (Bloomsbury) | One of those Excruciating Long Overly Dull Microscopic Examinations of an Author's Life (As If the Secret of His Art Were Hidden There |
| Our Lady of the Nile* | Scholastique Mukasonga | (Archipelago) | An Utterly Charming Peek at a Girl's School In Present-Day Rwanda with (Surprise!) Little Blood, Lots of Love |
| Dead Water | Ann Cleeves | (Minotaur) | An Endlessly Drawn Out Murder Mystery In, of All Places, the Shetland Islands |
| The Birds of Pandemonium
Life Among the Exotic and the Endangered |
Michele Raffin | (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) | Raffin Cannoit and Will Not Leave a Sick or Nutty Bird From Moving into Her Place There in the Santa Cruz Mountains |
| Doing It at the Dixie Dew | Ruth Moose | (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne) | Another Bed & Breakfast Murder --- This Time in the Deep South |
| The Queen's Caprice
Stories |
Jean Echenoz | (New Press) | Seven of Echenoz' Fiction/Non-Fiction Explorations Of History, Engineering, and the Outskirts of Paris |
| The Bird Skinner
A Novel |
Alice Greenway | (Grove Press) | A Surly Old Boozer Meets an Old Friends Lovely and Out-of-this-World Daughter |
| American Creation[G]
Triumphs and Tragedies at The Founding of the Republic |
Joseph J. Ellis | (Random House Audio) | A Can't-Stop-Listening Reading Of the Early Days of the Republic |
| Lanterns on
The Prairie[G]
The Blackfeet Photographs Of Walter McClintock |
Steven L. Grafe, Editor | (University of Oklahoma) | A Treasury of Photographs from the Late 19th Century |
| The Huwoman Race | Mike Ervin | [Article] | Another Sly Reading of Would-Be History by the Sly and Comic "Crip" Writer |
| Perceptions of Risk
Vs. the Real Thing |
Eula Biss | [Reading] | Howe You and I Misrepresent the Least Dangerous And Forget the Most Dangerous |
| The Louisiana Purchase[G] | Joseph J. Ellis | [Reading] | What Historian Ellis Calls "the Most Consequential Executive Decision in American History |
| Mr. Pou & the Alphabet
The Hell Poem |
John Berryman's | [Poetry] | One a Poem for His Son, Another a Poem about His Madness |
| Letter to the Dead[G] | Affonso Romano DeSant'Anna | [Poetry] | A Poem about the Fact that Nothing at All Has Changed |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Poole's Paradise
Viruses When Is a Rejection Just Too Quick? |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Twelve Great Readings | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | The Readings That Get The Most Repeat Business From Our Readers |
| Fire and Movement*
The British Expeditionary Force And the Campaign of 1914 |
Peter Hart | (Oxford) | The First Four Months of WWI, As Seen through the Eyes of the New Young Recruits |
| Under the Tripoli Sky | Kamal Ben Hameda | (Peirene) | A Boy on the Streets of Tripoli, Surrounded by Magic, and Magic Women |
| The Thoughts and
Happenings of Wilfred Price* Purveyor of Superior Funerals |
Wendy Jones | (Europa Editions) | A Young Funeral Director Finds Himself Caught in TheWiles of Women (That He May Have Brought on Himself) |
| One Day I Will Write About This Place A Memoir |
Binyavanga Wainaina | (Graywolf Press) | A Trip through the Languages (and Oddities) Of Modern-Day East Africa |
| Into the War | Italo Calvino | (Mariner Books) | The Early Days of WWII in San Remo As Experienced by the Young Fascists |
| Transoceanic Lights | S. Li | (Harvard Square Editions) | They Come from China to the Promised Land AndAll They Found Was Nag-Nag-Nag (and 16-Hour Work Days |
| Time Present and Time Past* | Deidre Madden | (Europa Editions) | The Normal Buckley Family Turns Out To Have Strange Delusions (and Odd Children) |
| Eight Mile High | Jim Ray Daniels | (Michigan State University Press) | A Normal Workaday Families in Michigan Turns Out to Have Some Violent Surprises |
| All-American Poem [G] | Matthew Dickman | (American Poetry Review) | A Young Eccentric Poet Shows Himself to Have Some Surprises in the Form (and Truth) Department |
| Timothy[G]
Or, Notes of An Abject Reptile |
Verlyn Klinkenborg Josephine Bailey, Reader |
(Tantor --- 5 CDs) | Gilbert White, the Naturalist's Naturalist From Two Centuries Ago, as Observed by His Turtle |
| Your Super-Ego Is Just an Old Nag |
Adam Phillips | [Reading] | How the Super-Ego Can Be Compared to Don Quixote's Horse, Rocinante |
| Radio:
Our Golden Age |
L. W. Milam | (Article) | Memories of Being Carried Aloft By the Sound of Late-Night Radio |
| The New Telephone and The New Airplane at War |
Peter Hart | [Reading] | A New War --- And New Means of Transmitting Information |
| Tito | Aaron Cometbus | [Poem] | Stuff in Your Apartment That the Landlord Should Never See |
| The History of the Minstrel Show | Richard Garcia | [Poem] | A Free Verse Memory of Some Deplorable Entertainments |
| Shiva Goes
Surfing Off Newfoundland |
Francis S. Pickins | [Poem] | The Great Warm Mother In the Cold Northeast |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Another Letter from Warren Buffet
Edward Everett Twisted Spoon Press |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Several Dozen Odd Letters | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Wonderful (and Freaky) Letters That Have Come into Our Offices Over the Past Twenty Years |
| The Insect Cookbook
Food for a Sustainable Planet |
Arnold van Huis, Henk van Gurp, and Marcel Dicke | (Columbia University Press) | Things You Should Be Eating Right Now (Grasshopper, Mealworms, Thrips, Bedbugs, Roaches) So Our Children Can Survive and Thrive |
|
Cultural Encyclopedia Of the Penis |
Michael Kimmel, Christine Milrod, And Amanda Kennedy, Editors |
(Rowman & Littlefield) | The Weenie, in High (And Tedious) Relief |
| Turing
Pioneer of the Information Age |
Jack Copeland | (Oxford) | The Inventor of the Computer And the Big Question: Did the British Government Drive Him to Suicide? |
| Time Ages in a Hurry* | Antonio Tabucchi | (Archipelago Books) | A Small Selection of Several of the Author's Stories |
| Doctors Without Borders
Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams Of Médecins Sans Frontières |
Renée C. Fox | (Johns Hopkins University Press) | A Sociological Study of the Pioneering Medical Group That Has Helped In Some of the Most Decimated Parts of the World |
| White Hunger | Aki Ollikainen | (Peirene) | The Finnish Famine of 1866 - 1868 |
| I Refuse | Per Petterson | (Graywolf Press) | A Novel of Two Men of Norway One Rich, One Poor, Both Unhappy |
| The Chair
Poems |
Richard Garcia | (BOA) | A Hundred of So of What Our Reviewer Calls "Box Poems |
| The Emperor, C'est Moi | Hugo Horiot | (Seven Stories Press) | Adventures in Inexpressiveness By Our Young (and Feisty) Hero |
| Hidden Witness[G]
African-American Images from The Dawn of Photography To the Civil War |
Jackie Napolean Wilson | (St. Martin's Press) | The Discover, by Our Writer, Of a Treasure-Trove of Ancient Photographs |
| Broken
Land[G]
Poems of Brooklyn |
Julia Spicher Kasdorf Michael Tyrell Editors |
(New York University Press) | A Bracing Collection of Poems on Brooklyn From the 17th Century to Now |
| The Evening The World Ended |
The Phantom | [Article] | Memories of Some Unforgettable AA Meetings (in the Basement) |
| The Trial of Fatty Arbuckle[G] |
Wanda Felix | [Article] | The Trial of the Century (From Ninety Years Past) |
| Fighting with Father | Pers Petterson | [Reading] | A Classic Battle Out of Oedipus |
| Eugène Atget's Paris & Walter Benjamin |
Alexander Gelley | [Reading] | Classic Views of the Streets of Paris |
| To a Nose | Francisco de Quevedo | [Poem] | The Hooter, Examined |
| Strawberry Pie | Xia Yu | [Poem] | The Sweet (and the Sad) of Love |
| Death Is Sitting[G] At the Foot Of My Bed |
Oscar Hahn | [Poem] | How Not to Sleep Well at Night |