[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
www.ralphmag.org/IL/indexIL.html
Late Summer 2015
Title
Author
Publisher
Subject
Pictures of neuropsychological syndromes.
The man sitting on the car
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Making a killing in Afghan treasure
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH
Fifteen Great Detective Stories
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Great Murder Books
That Have Come to Us since 1994Rust
The Longest WarJonathan Waldman
(Simon and Schuster)
A Study of the Unseen Disaster
(Creeping Over Us As We Speak!)Mayumi and
The Sea of
Happiness*
Jennifer Tseng
(Europa Editions)
A Young Love (Very Young) with
The Town Librarian and the High School Student
(Who Loves Lollipops)The Small House at Allington*
Anthony Trollope
Read by David Shaw-Parker (Naxos Audiobooks)
One of those Heavy (and Very Funny) Books
Out of 19th Century England
(and Out of Sight)My Depression
A Picture BookElizabeth Swados
(Seven Stories)
You Think You Got Problems?
Wait Until You try This "Comic Book"Blue-Eyed Boy
A MemoirRobert Timberg
(Penguin)
They Literrally Burned Off His Face in Vietnam
And He Survived to
Live with It, and Even Prosper The Hollow Land*
Jane Gardam
(Europa Editions)
A Family of Cumbrians Meet
An Equally Droll Family from LondonPapyrus:
The Plant That Changed the World
From Ancient Egypt to Today's Water WarsJohn Gaudet
(Pegasus Books)
The Earliest Paper in All
Its Ever-Varying FormsHummingbirds*
Ronald Orenstein
(Firefly Books)
Many of the Almost 350 Species
Represented in the Luscious BookThe Reluctant Matador
A Hugo Marston NovelMark Pryor
(Seventh Street Books)
A Fairly Big Turkey about
Murderous Doings in BarcelonaBlind Moon Alley*
John Florio
(Seventh Street Books)
A Startlingly Good Mystery
Set in Prohibition PhiladelphiaThe Chrysler Building[G]
Creating a New Icon
Day by DayDavid Stravitz
(Princeton Architectural)
The Original Construction Photographs Revealed Tropical &
Subtropical Trees[G]
An EncyclopediaMargaret Barwick
(Timber Press)
Over 2000 Trees Described and Shown
--- Many in Color'Til the Well Runs Dry*
A NovelLauren Francis-Sharma
(Henry Holt)
We Loved This One So Much That
We Decided to Review it Again (with Pith)Chopped Liver
Mike Ervin
[Article]
A Crip's Demand that the Many Rip-Off Joints
Take Notice of the Disabled TooBisphenol-A
and
Aluminum Cans
Jonathan Waldman
[Reading]
The Truth About What You Are Drinking
With Your Coke or BeansPapyrus and the Crocodiles
John Gaudet
[Reading]
A Trip Down the Nile Seeking Papyrus
(And Crocodiles)Autumn
T. E. Hulme
[Poem]
One of the First Imagist Poems The Meaning of Life
From The MahabharataPeter Brook
[Drama]
Thoughts on Creation
(And Love)
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Talking Cows
Trotsky and the Ice Pick and the Twitter/Instagram generation Letters We Never Finished Reading Motherless Babies and Widowers in Your Country |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Fifteen Great Travel Books And a Couple that Bombed |
The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Some of the Great Travel Books That Have Come to Us since 1994 |
| Seven Steps to Train Your Mind | Gomo Tulko | (Wisdom) | The Many Ways to Involve one in the Practice of Buddhism |
| The Wright Brothers* | David McCullough | (Simon & Schuster) | The (Often Surprising) Studies and Designs Of the Two Brothers from Dayton, Ohio |
| Uniforms | Bettina Hubby | (Ice House) | The Whimsy of the Official Uniform Shown, Often, Without Bodies Attached |
| Judge This | Chip Kidd | (TED/Simon & Schuster) | A Man Who Has Designed Many a Book Cover Tells Us the Goods and Bads of Representative Salesmanship |
| Aquarium | David Vann | (Atlantic Monthly) | Young Caitlin Falls in with the Fishies And Gets Excoriated by an Irate Mother |
| The Dead Lake | Hamid Ismailov | (Peirene) | A Young/Old Musician of Kazakhstan and the Decimation Of a Community Under the Shadow of the Bomb |
| A Higher Form of Killing
Six Weeks in World War I that Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare |
Diana Preston | (Bloomsbury) | Bombing Cities, Using Gas in the Trenches And Sinking Passenger Ships on the High Seas |
| The Man in the High Castle | Philip K. Dick | (Brilliance Audio) | What Would Have Happened if the Japanese And Nazi Germany Had Won WWII |
| Wil Usdi
Thoughts from the Asylum A Cherokee Novella |
Robert J. Conley | (University of Oklahoma Press) | A Most Brilliant Cherokee Goes Bonkers At the End of the Civil War |
| Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay |
Elena Ferrante | Europa | Two Young Ladies from the Slums of Naples Grow Up and Grow Apart |
| H. L. Mencken on American Literature[G] |
S. T. Joshi, Editor | (Ohio University Press) | They Call Him the Sage if Baltimore; Better, the Snarl of Baltimore |
| White Waters and Black[G] | Gordon MacCreagh | (Chicago) | Too Many Scientists Seeking The Headwaters of the Amazon |
| The Sargasso Sea Of Motherboards |
Dr. Phage | [Article] | The Parts of the Computer that Go Bump in the Night |
| Dog Eating Mountain Lion |
Matt Sumell | [Reading] | What to Do if Your Favorite Dog Goes Missing in the National Park |
| Rabbi Eliakum ben Yahya Meets the KKK |
Steve Stern | [Reading] | What Happens to the Fiery Cross When the Good Rabbi Appears on the Scene |
| From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old[G] | Hanan Mikha'il 'Ashrawi | [Poems] | Poetry from Palestine and Israel |
| The Spider Sonnet | John Whitworth | [Poem] | The Solution to Pollution is to Stop Ingesting Spiders |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
The Vivisection Mambo I, II & |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Fifteen Great History Books And a Couple of Stinkers |
The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Some of the Great History Books That Have Come to Us since 1994 |
| Tales of Remarkable Birds | Dominic Couzens | (Bloomsbury) | Thirty-nine of the Rarest and Most Beautiful Birds from All over the World |
| Making Nice | Matt Sumell | (Henry Holt) | An Obnoxious Son-of-a-Bitch that the Reader --- perhaps --- Would Prefer not to Read about |
| Falling in Love With Hominids* |
Nalo Hopkinson | (Tachyon) | Several Weird Tales --- Well-Executed but Sinister --- of People of Another World if not Our Own |
| Hitting the Streets (Courir les Rues) |
Raymond Queneau Rachel Galvin, Translator |
(Carcanet) | Oddly Appealing Short Tales from The Streets of Paris |
| Dangerous When Wet | Jamie Brickhouse | (St. Martin's Press) | A Memoir of Growing Up as Mama's One and Only, Who Somehow Managed to Survive |
|
The Meat Racket
The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business* |
Christopher Leonard | (Simon & Schuster) | A Terrific Study of Oligopolistic Tendencies In the American Meat Market |
| A Brief History of Portable Literature |
Enrique Vita-Matas Anne McLean & Thomas Bunstead Translators |
(New Directions) | An Odd-Ball Picture of Duchamp, Benjamin, et al And Their Search for the Most Portable Literature of Them All |
| H Is for Hawk | Helen Macdonald | (Grove Press) | A Look at the H for Highly Proclaimed Novel which Our Reviewer Opined May Have Slighted the Goshawk and the Reader as Well |
| Wondering Who You Are* | Sonya Lea | (TinHouse Books) | A Stunning Tale of Losing Your Love in the Operating Room And Finding Him Different (but Great) --- Lurking Right Next Door |
|
The Cartel A Novel | Don Winslow | (Knopf) | A Novel History Novel Proving that We've All Lost the War on Drugs |
| Emanuel Swedenborg's Journal of Dreams[G] |
Commentary by Wilson van Dusen |
(Swedenborg Foundation) | In Which Dreams from 250 Years Ago Tell Us More about the Interpretation of Dreams And Somewhat Bit Less Than the Dreamer |
| Isaac Bashevis Singer and The Lower East Side |
Bruce Davidson, Photographer | (Mead Art Museum/ University of Wisconsin) |
A Terrific Story Interlaced with Terrific Photographs |
| Loving One Who Thinks He Has Forgotten You[G] |
Sonya Lea | [Reading] | Making Love with One Who Can't Remember Ever Having Made Love Before |
| The Refugees and the Picnic | Jon Gallant | [Article] | A Vivid Reincarnation of the Refugee Story from 1989 --- Where Lost People Were Much More Honored than Those in 2015 |
| God Must Be Female[G] | J. P. Donleavy | [Reading] | A man Who (Perhaps) Loves And Remembers Too Much |
| Four In The Morning | Dame Edith Sitwell | [Poem] | "The Allegro Negro Cocktail Shaker" |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Wrong Icehouse Bladder Bags Crowned Cranes A General in the Chinese Army Ryszard Kapuscinski Beavers in Florida Plato and Platypus |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Twelve Neglected Novels | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Some of Great Novels That Have Come to Us Over the Last Two Years |
| Idyll Threats | Stephane Gayle | (Seventh Street Books) | A Cop from the Big City Resigns to Solve Murders in Idyll CT |
| I Can Give You Anything But Love | Gary Indiana | (Rizzoli) | A Kind of an Autobiography Seeded with Some Reportage And No End of, ulp, The Beast. With Two. Backs. |
|
The Liar's Wife
Four Novellas |
Mary Gordon | (Brilliance Audio) | Four Attempts to Resolve the Usual Catholic Paradox Favored by the Author |
| The Ville Rat | Martin Limén | (Soho) | A Visit with Detectives in South Korea With Good if not Overwhelming Local Color |
| Like a Beggar* | Ellen Bass | (Copper Canyon) | Poetry of the "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" School |
|
Woodpeckers of the World*
A Photographic Guide |
Gerard Gorman | (Firefly) | 1,000 Photographs of the 239 Piciformes Worldwide |
|
Enabling Acts
The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave The Largest U. S. Minority its Rights |
Lennard J. Davis | (Beacon Press) | An Exhaustive Study of the Formation of the ADA |
|
The Moonstone*
A Romance |
Wilkie Collins | (Naxos) | A Knockout Audio Version of the Famed Thriller from 1868 |
|
More Harm than Good [G]
What Your Doctor May Not Tell You about Common Treatments And Procedures |
Alan Zelicoff, M.D. Michael Bellomo |
(Amacom) | A Fascinating Study of the Treatments That May Leave You Worse Off |
|
Help Your Dog Fight Cancer [G]
What Every Caretaker Should Know About Canine Cancer |
Laurie Kaplan | (Kaplan) | More Than You May Ever Want to Know about The Illnesses of Your Pet |
| Letter from Seattle | Dr. Phage | [Article] | Thoughts on Twitter, Twaddle, Twerp, and Trump Along with the Vandalism of the Glassy Works of Dale Chihuly |
| The New Silence | Mark Morford | [Reading] | A New (And Alarming) Silence on the Bird Front |
|
Benny's Scratch Pad
The House of the Dealer |
Gary Indiana | [Reading] | The Volcanic Trash From Out the Front Door |
| The Burning Ghats
India, 1900 |
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky | [Reading] | Scenes from Early Vistas of India |
|
A Head Full of Maggots
Reconstructing the Crime Scene |
Wilkie Collins | [Reading] | A Great Scene of Rebellion in the Ranks from The Moonstone |
|
Ordinary Sex Ode to the Fish |
Ellen Bass | [Poetry] | Great Scenes of Love (And Fish) From a Master Poet |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Debussy
Five Duffers & Five Million Dollars |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Twelve Great Pix | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Photographs that Appear with Our Reviews That Seem to Generate the Most Interest |
| The Essential Ginsberg* | Allen Ginsberg Michael Schumacher, Editor |
(Harper Perennial) | An Excellent Collection of Ginsberg's Poems, Essays, Criticism, and Best of All, His Astute Interviews |
| Peterson Reference Guide to Owls Of North America and the Caribbean |
Scott Weidensaul | (Houghton Mifflin) | Thirty-nine Species of Owls of United States, Canada, Mexico, and various islands of the Caribbean With Hundreds of Fine Photographs |
| The Shift
One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives |
Theresa Brown | (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) | Full Time Nurse on the Oncology Ward --- With Some Agonizing Moments (And Surprises)/th> |
| Walking with Abel* Journeys with the Nomads Of the African Savannah |
Anna Badkhen | (Riverhead) | A Year with the Cow-herders of Mali --- Filled with Some Astonishing Moments of Beauty |
| God's Bankers A History of Money and Power at the Vatican |
Gerald Posner | (Simon & Schuster) | A Heavily Annotated Study of The Finances of the Mother Church |
| The Hare with Amber Eyes A Hidden Inheritance |
Edmund de Waal | (Vintage) | A Wonderful History of a Family (With a Great Collection of Netsuke) |
| The Martian* | Andy Weir R. C. Bray, Reader |
(Brilliance Audio) | A Wonderful Reading of the Now- Famous Classic of Survival (Where None Should Survive) |
| The Vienna Melody* | Ernst Lothar | (Europa Editions) | A Classic Novel of the Old School: A Vienna Family from 1890 - 1945 |
| Solo A James Bond Novel |
William Boyd | (Vintage) | In Which a Veteran Writer Tries to --- And Succeeds in --- Out-Fleming Fleming |
| The Story of the Lost Child | Elena Ferrante | (Europa Editions) | Elena and Lila in the Very Last (Alas!) Novel of Their Life Together (and Apart) |
| The Lower River A Novel of Africa |
Paul Theroux | (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) | You Go to Africa and Think You Got It Only to Find Out That It's Got You |
| Crossroads Women Coming of Age in Today's Uganda |
Christopher Conte, Editor | (Crossroads) | Fourteen Women of a Coffee Cooperative of Uganda Tell What It Is Really Like to Be Lively (and Active) in 21st Century Africa |
| The American People In World War II [G] |
David M. Kennedy | (Oxford) | A Superb History of 1941 - 1945 Filled with a Series of Unbelievable (And Forgotten) Events |
| Another Day of Life[G] | Ryszard Kapuściński | (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) | The Polish Journalist Who Went Anywhere --- In This Case Angola --- When All the Others WereBailing Out |
| How the Stop the War Coalition Coalesced | Jon Gallant | [Article] | How the STWC Viewed The End of Communist Rule (And Their Take on America's Role) |
| Alice's Adventures Under Ground
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson |
Douglas Cruickshank | [Article] | How to Access the Real, True Copy of The Original Alice in Wonderland |
| Playing Under Lenin, Lenin and the Cheese Sandwich |
Gary Shteyngart | [Readings] | Two Short Excessively Funny Readings from Little Failure |
| Good News (and Three Others) | Matt Walker | [Poems] | Four New Poems of the New Neo-Realist School |
|
Ordinary Sex Ode to the Fish |
Ellen Bass | [Poetry] | Great Scenes of Love (And Fish) From a Master Poet |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Shostakovich's Symphonies and Soviet Politics
"I have wittenessed youre heathens picture of our Savior." Signs and Machines: Maurizio Lazzarato |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Eleven Supposed Reviews | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Older Reviews that May Defy the Scepticism of Our Editors And Strain the Good Will of Our Readers |
| The Trace*
A Novel |
Forrest Gander | (New Directions) | The Fearsome Story of Two Gringos Lost in the Chihuahua Desert Amongst A Band of Narcotraficantes |
| Symphony for the City of the Dead
Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad |
M. T. Anderson | (Candlewick Press) | The Evolution of Shostakovich's Music Amidst Soviet Censorship and Harassment |
| Coming Ashore | Catherine Gildner | (ECW Press) | An Unabashed Yank Intellectual In Oxford, Cleveland, and Canada in The early Seventies |
| Beauty is a Wound* | Eka Kurniawan | (New Directions) | The Classic Epic Transferred to Indonesia with a Full Cast of Ghosts, Revolutionaries, and Whores |
| Blackass*
A Novel |
A. Igoni Barrett | (Graywolf Press) | An Unemployed Man in Kenya Is Suddenly, Overnight, Transformed Into a Honky in Traffic-Filled Lagos |
| Moonshine, Monster Catfish, And Other Southern Comforts Travels in the American South |
Burkhard Bilger | (Arrow Books) | Tall Tales Direct from The Moonshine Stills, Cat Fish Spawning Grounds and Cock Fight Rings |
| Iris Murdoch
As I Knew Her |
A.N. Wilson | (Arrow Books) | The Famed Writer Dissolving Into Alzheimer's as Told, Faithfully by Her Writer Husband |
| The Milli Vanilli Condition*
Essays on Culture in The New Millennium |
Eduardo Espina | (Arte Publico) | A Variety of Essays --- Improbable, Astonishing --- From a Fresh New Voice out of The Wilds of Montevideo, Uruguay |
| The ALC We Do Not See
Africa's Invisible Art, Literature & Culture |
Douglas Cruickshank | [Article] | Writings, Books, Exhibits, Collections Designed to Prove that Africa Is More than a Pernicious Basket-Case of Starvation, Ignorance, and a Warring Post-Colonial Nightmare |
| American Windmills[G]
An Album of Historic Photographs |
T. Lindsay Baker | (University of Oklahoma) | A Collection of More than 200 Photographs Of the Great Driver/Mover of 19th Century Plains America |
| The Wisdom of Wilderness [G]
Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature |
Gerald G. May | (Harper/SanFrancisco) | A Christian Psychiatrist Tells of His Own Mystical Experiences |
| Nights in the Pink Motel [G] An American Strategist's Pursuit of Peace in Iraq |
Robert Earle | (Naval Institute Press) | Earle, Somewhat of a Misfit Himself, Tells of His Own Bizarre Adventures In the Far East Reaches Of the Second Bush's Administration |
| Not Rabies, Baby, But Baby
Scabies [G] |
L. W. Milam | [Article] | One Man's Pursuit of a Cure For The Seven-Year Itch |
| The Clemson Cripmas Party | L. W. Milam | [Article] | And His Suggestions for How A Disgraced Fraternity from the Old South Can Redeem Itself |
| The Seige of Leningrad | Matthew Tobin Anderson | [Reading] | 900 Days of Starvation In the Freezing Days of Early WWII |
| The Liquid Country of Memory | Eduardo Espina | [Reading] | When a Tsunami Becomes A Symbol of Water, Japan, and "the Stimulus and Disorder of Acceptance." |
| Water As Literature | Eduardo Espina | [Reading] | And When Virginia Woolf, Hart Crane, and "A visually Inaugural Territory" Become One |
| "Good Girl,"
"What Do Women Want?" and "You Don't Know What Love Is" |
Kim Addonizio | [Poetry] | Four Contemporary and Powerful Poems |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| T. S. Eliot Sticks It to Geo. Orwell
A Letter to Philip Glass |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Twelve Dynamite Books from The Last Days of 2015 |
The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Some books from the late year that received our much-coveted *star* --- being a book of some merit. |
| Hardcore Zen*
Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and The Truth about Reality |
Brad Warner | (Wisdom) | Zen Isn't What You Think; and What's More, This So-Called Enlightenment Is A Confounded Let-Down --- So Don't Bother. But Do It! |
| The First Bad Man*
A Novel |
Miranda July | (Scribner) | A Giantess Invades Her Home And then a Tiny Babe. Zounds! |
| Words without Music*
A Memoir |
Philip Glass | (Liveright) | This Glass Pretends He's a Composer So He Can Drive Taxi and Plumb --- And Write a Dynamite Memoir |
| The Argonauts* | Maggie Nelson | (Graywolf) | Friendly Essays on Sex-Change Operations and Having Babies and Chatting with the Babe In Utero |
| The Looking-Glass Sisters | Gøhril Gabrielsen | (Peirene) | Two Very Chilly Ladies Living in the Northernmost Part of Norway --- and Trying to Figure Out a Way to Get Rid of Each Other |
| Wall Flower
A Life on the German Border |
Rita Kuczynski | (University of Toronto Press) | She Was But a Child When the Ugly Fence Went Up --- And She Spent the Next Twenty Years Depressed (In the Arms of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel) |
| How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness A Mindful Guide |
Toni Bernhard | (Wisdom) | Imagine Being Struck Down in a Doctor-Resistant Truma That Drains YourEnergy, Your Well-Being, and even Your Desire to Be With Friends and Family |
| Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates | (Spiegel & Grau) | This Slim, Everyone-Loves-It-Tome Shows Itself to Be Filled with Insight (And Way Too Much Ennui) |
| We Were Brothers | Barry Moser | (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) | This Somewhat Famous Illustrator Tells Us All about His Crappy Childhood with Brother Tommy |
| The City of Falling Angels[G] | John Berendt | (Sceptre --- 2005) | The Word's Most Famous City Has Its Ups and Downs (and Can Get Downright Stinky Too) |
| Human Rights in African Prisons[G] | Jeremy Sarkin, Editor | (Ohio University Press) | A Roam through the Shadow Side of Living with All the Stops Pulled Out |
| A Sense Sublime[G] | Richard Quinney | (Borderland Books) | A Puzzling Story that Includes Meister Eckhart, William Wordsworth, Wendell Berry, Lau-Tzu, and the Texas Zen Master, Willie Nelson |
| The Guise of Another[B] | Allen Eskens | (Seventh Street Books) | A Detective and Drago Basta --- "A Coldblooded Veteran of the Balkan Wars" |
| The War Reporter [B]
A Novel |
Martin Fletcher | (Thomas Dunne Books) | All the Reasons You Could Ever Possibly Need As to Why Your Should Never Got to Serbia |
| The Music of Gold | Philip Glass | [Reading] | A Visit to the Serra Pelada Gold Mine in northern Brazil |
| A Contrarian Philosopher in East Berlin | Rita Kuczynski | University of Toronto Press | The Proposed Ballet Drawn from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit |
| Dirty Artists & The Clean Rich | Joyce Cary | [Reading] | That Formidable Con Man and Artist Gully Jimson At Loose Ends in the Land of the Rich |
| Starfish | Eleanor Lerman | [Poem] | Floating, Floating Down the River Millions of Us Lucky Starfish |