[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
www.ralphmag.org/IS/indexIS.html
Late Winter 2015 - 2016
Title
Author
Publisher
Subject
The (Welcome) Absence
of Arizona
To Purchase a Work of Art
from RALPH
An Important Letter to RALPH
From Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve Board
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH
Twelve Great "Mystical" Books and Readings
from Our First Twenty-One YearsThe Editors of RALPH
[List]
Twelve Interesting Books and Readings
Having to Do with Zen, Buddhism, "Eastern" Mysticism,
and Western Spiritualism.
Project Animal Farm
An Accidental Journey into
the Secret World
of Farming and
the Truth about Our FoodSonia Faruqi
(Pegasus Books)
Stuff You Don't Want to Be Reading
While You Are Chowing Down on KFC
or a MacBurger
The Gambler's Apprentice*
H. Lee Barnes
(University of Nevada Press)
Willie Bobbins Goes from Being a Low-Level
Mexican Cattle Rustler to a Fast Man with the Cards ---
All in One Entrancing Volume
Chutzpah!
New Voices from ChinaOu Ning and Austin Woerner,
Editors
(University of Oklahoma Press)
Fifteen Stories from the Defunct Chutzpah! Magazine
--- Showing Many of the Predilections of Today's Young Chinese Writers
The Blue Guitar
A Novel John Banville
(Knopf)
John Banville Being John Banville with
The Usual Thieving, Swiving, and Adultery
A Cat, a Man, & Two Women
Junichiro Tanizaki
(New Directions)
The Man Who Brought The Tale of Genji to Japan Eighty Years Ago
--- This Time on the Cat that
Destroyed Two Marriages
Wide Awake
Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond Suzanne Lummis, Editor
(Pacific Coast Poetry Series)
112 New Poets on Smog, Freeways,
Dope, Love, Passion, and the Jurassic
The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake
A Samuel Craddock MysteryTerry Shames
(Seventh Street Books)
A Murder in the Texas Panhandle ---
With the Loveable Old Sheriff
(and His Cows)
A Kind of Compass
Stories on DistanceBelinda McKeon, Editor
(Tramp Press)
Seventeen Stories --- Which May Have Everything
(Or Nothing) to Do with "Distance"
The Curse of Jacob Tracy*
Holly Messinger
(Thomas Dunne Books)
A Delightful Romp with Spooks and
Werewolves from the Old West ---
With a Cowboy Who Could Care Less
The Cairo Affair
Olen Steinhauer
(St. Martin's Press)
Murder in a Restaurant in Budapest
Leads Us Back to Egypt during Arab Spring
A Passion to Win[G]
Sumner Redstone and
Peter Knobler
(Simon & Schuster)
Some Reflections on the Story of Redstone's Life,
along with New Aging and Personal Troubles
A Chronicle of Jazz[G]
Mervyn Cooke
(Oxford)
Reflections on the History of Jazz and Herbie Hancock,
Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong
The Way We Wore[O]
A Life in ThreadsRobert Elms
(Picador --- 2005)
Stories of How Clothes Made the Young Men
Who Made a Fashion Statement with their Lives
Disgrace[O]
J.M. Coetzee
(Vintage --- 2009)
Schadenfreude --- the Decline and Fall of a Professor
Who Just Didn't Know How to Stop
The Genesis of
Sex & Broadcasting
Lorenzo W. Milam
[Article]
The Genesis of the Book from 1972 on
Building a Radio Station for the Community
Where the Fake Spiritualist
Meets the Real Spiritualist
Holly Messinger
[Reading]
A Riotous Account of a Seance Where
The Cowboy Does All the Work
Three Poems from Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond
Suzanne Lummis, Editor
[Poetry]
Three Modern Poems from Young Writers of Los Angeles
[O] = Books from Past Years Reviewed
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Odd Friendships [Among Animals] Russian Artists under Stalin Getting Mooned by God |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Twelve Interesting Reviews and Readings From the Last Twenty-One Years of RALPH |
The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Twelve Interesting Books Treating with Subjects Ranging from Obituaries from the New York Times to Poems about Parenting Grown Children to Medical Care During the American Civil War |
| The Guilty* Stories |
Juan Villoro | (George Braziller) | Stories from the Yucatán, Oaxaca, and Mexico City |
| Tram 83* | Fiston Mwanza Mujila | (Deep Vellum Publishing) | The Bittersweet Experience of Urban Africa |
|
Everything to Nothing* The Poetry of the Great War, Revolution, And the Transformation of Europe |
Geert Buelens | (Verso) | The Poet Turned into a Man of Action Between 1914 and 1918 |
|
Bull And Other Stories |
Kathy Anderson | (Autumn House Press) | Thirteen Mind-Bending Stories --- Some Way Beyond the Pale |
| American Candide | Mahendra Singh | (Rosarium Publishing) | Voltaire's Seminal Novel Transformed into America of Reality Television and Televangelists, Venal Businessmen and Cheating Bankers |
|
Hot Milk* A Novel |
Deborah Levy | (Bloomsbury) | Levy Mixes it Up with A Mother, Her Daughter And the Love of the Almería Coast |
|
Jonas Salk: A Life |
Charlotte DeCross Jacobs | (Oxford) | The Man Who Created the Vaccine Made Very Human (and Very Sad) |
| The Living Bird 100 Years of Listening to Nature |
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Photographs by Gerrit Vyn |
(Mountaineers Books) | Over Two Hundred Birds Pictured, Described, and Given Fearful Notices |
| Fear and the Muse Kept Watch* The Russian Masters --- From Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein --- Under Stalin |
Andy McSmith | (The New Press) | The Great Writers, Musicians, and Film-Makers As Terrorised by Stalin and the Soviet System |
| Greening Death Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth |
Suzanne Kelly | (Rowman & Littlefield) |
The New Funerary Movement --- That Protects the Environment and Our Love and Respect for the Newly-Deceased. |
| Martinique --- Snake Charmer[G] Martinique --- Charmeuse de Serpents |
André Breton | (University of Texas Press) | The Dada Master En Route To the United States in 1940 |
| Letter to D[G] A Love Story |
André Gorz | (Polity) |
The Existentialist Revealed as a Fearful Self-Loathing Worry-Wart |
| American Copia[G] An Immigrant Epic |
Javier O. Huerta |
(Arte/Publico Press / University of Houston) |
How to Fall in Love with Shopping in American Supermarkets |
| Mark Twain in Hawaii | Douglas Cruickshank | [Article] | How Samuel Clemens Found Himself In the Sandwich Islands |
| Another Stinky Dog Story | R. P. Warren | [Reading] | The Governor in a Photo-Op Finds Himself In the Arms of a Dog with Terrible Halitosis |
| Child Soldiers in Literature | David M. Rosen | [Reading] | The American Revolution and Civil War As Proving Ground for Boy-Soldiers |
| Sergei Eisenstein in Mexico | Andy McSmith | [Reading] | The Mad Director Toying with The Powers That Be in Stalinist Russia |
| Olives, Her Long Illness | Donald Hall | [Poetry] | Two Great Poems --- One on Youth, Another on a Lingering Death |
| Pangur Bán[G] My Cat |
Anon | [Poem] |
A Treasure in Verse Drawn from A Friar's Manuscript from the 9th Century In St. Paul's Monastery in Bodensee/th> |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
American Candide
Images intégrées Odd Letters from the Past |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Fifteen Great Animal Books | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Fifteen Interesting Books About Animals --- Some Loving (and Licking) --- Others with Definite Violence Afoot |
| Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination
From Patriots to Victims |
David M. Rosen | (Rutgers University Press) | The Stories of Armies through the Ages --- More often than not, Filled with Children Well Below Seventeen |
| Dinner with Buddha*
A Novel |
Roland Merullo | (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) | Rinpoche on the Road with His Very American "Brother-in-Waw" | The Etymologicon
A Circular Stroll Through The Hidden Connections of The English Language |
Mark Forsyth | (Berkley Books) | A Very Funny Look at the Origins, The Uses, and the Misuses of Our Very Odd Language |
| Why Walls Won't Work*
Repairing the US-Mexico Divide |
Michael Dear | (Oxford University Press) | A Penetrating Look at The Pretend Divide between Our Two Countries |
| A Kind of Dream
|
Kelly Cherry | (Terrace) | A Baker's Dozen of Stories About Love and Family and Dogs Who Come Back Lead Us Home | Perfect Lives
Stories |
Polly Samson | (Bloomsbury) | Eleven Stories about Piano Tuners and Ladies in Tune (and in Love) |
| The Viceroys (Verso) | Federico De Roberto | (Verso) | "The rotten, greedy core of Sicilian feudalism" in a novel of Italian "Verismo." |
| Wild by Nature From Siberia to Australia --- Three Years Alone in The Wilderness on Foot |
Sarah Marquis | (Thomas Dunne/St. Martins) | Ms Marquis in an Extended, Tortured, Trekkie Selfie for Sarah Marquis | Rain Dogs*
A Detective Sean Duffy Novel |
Adrian McKinty | (Seventh Street Books) | A Won't-Leave-You-Alone Mystery Set in a Dark Castle in Carrickfergus |
| My Bright Midnight[O]
A Novel |
Josh Russell | (Louisiana University) | A Love Triangle Set in the Miserable 1930s and 1940s in Lovely Louisiana |
| The Moneymaker[O] | Janet Gleeson | (Bantam Press --- 1999) | The Life and Times of the Great (and Greedy) John Law | City Requiem, Calcutta[G]
Gender and the Politics of Poverty |
Ananya Roy | (University of Minnesota Press) | An Honest (and True) Look At Life in Modern-Day Calcutta |
| My War Gone by, I Miss it So[G] |
Anthony Loyd | (Penguin) | The Truth of those "Little" Wars in Bosnia, Servia, Croatia |
| Twentieth Century United States
Photographers[G]
A Student's Guide |
Kristin G. Congdon Karas Kelley Hallmark |
(Greenwood Press) | One of those Books Where the Pictures Speak Louder (and Better) than the Words |
| A Conversation with
Screenwriter- Author Ronald Harwood |
Douglas Cruickshank | [Interview] | An Extended Conversation with the Director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly |
| Lunch at the
Roadside Café with Volya Rinpoche |
Roland Merullo | [Reading] | Having Lunch with a Proto Buddha in a Greasy Spoon in North Dakota |
| A Journey with Virgil | Kelly Cherry | [Reading] | A Trip though the Divine Comedy With a Dog Named Virgil |
| Borders and Passports and RFID | Frances Saunders | [Reading] | How You and I Have Voluntarily Set Ourselves Up to Be Traced Every Moment, Every Day |
| Bean Soup Or a Legume Miscellany |
Philip Paradis | [Poem] | In Classical Praise of the Musical Fruit |
| Men As Trees, Walking | William Greenway | [Poem] | Seeing through the Glass, Darkly |
| Cow Worship | Gerald Stern | [Poem] | In Praise of Bovine Love |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Junky Old Cars Our Favorite War Books Getting Rid of Arizona Once and for All |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Let's Examine What's Left of Your Brain, Please | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Eighteen Interesting Books, Readings, Poems And Articles About Psychotherapy |
| Monticello in Mind
Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson |
Lisa Russ Spaar, Editor | (University of Virginia Press) | His Religious Thoughts, His 18th Century Rationality, His Ability with Words, His Love of Poetry . . . and the Supposed Children by His slaves. |
| Tales from the Couch*
A Clinical Psychologist's True Stories of Psychopathology |
Bob Wendorf, PsyD | (Carrel Books) | A Charming Clinical Therapist with Dozens of Fascinating Patients |
| Poetry of Resistance
Voices for Social Justice |
Francisco X. Alarcón Odilia Galván Rodríguea Editors |
(University of Arizona Press) | Over a Hundred Poems about Arizona's New Laws Directed at "Illegals." |
| The Battle for Room 314
My Year of Hope and Despair In a New York City High School |
Ed Boland | (Grand Central) | A Year of Teaching at Union Street School, on New York City's East Side. |
| Best New Poems --- 2015
50 Poems from Emerging Writers |
Tracy K. Smith, Editor | (University of Virginia Press) | Quite a Few Abstract-Expressionist Poems |
| In Gratitude* | Jenny Diski | (Bloomsbury) | Cancer of the Lymph Nodes, Fibrosis of the Lungs and Dying and Death (On the Final Pages) |
| The Timid Cabbage*
A Poem by Charles Krafft |
Illustrated by Femke Hiemstra | (Sympathetic Press) | Supposedly a Poem about Brassica In Reality a Riff on Lutheranism |
| Hair
A Human History |
Kurt Stenn | (Pegasus Books) | A Thousand Things You Might Not Want to Know about Your Hair |
| Travels in the Interior of Africa[G] | Mungo Park | (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) | One of Those Nutty Colonialists Wandering through 1795 Gambia To Trace the Course of the Niger River |
| My 'Dam Life[G]
Three Years in Holland |
Sean Condon | (Lonely Planet) | Everything You Need to Know about Why You Don't Want to Live (and Work) in Amsterdam |
| Mao Zedong[G] | Jonathan Spence | (Viking/Penguin) | A Terrific Study of Mao --- that Sounds Like An American Up-from-the-Bottom Tale |
| Edward Weston[G]
Photographs from the Getty Museum |
Brett Abbott | (J. Paul Getty Museum) | Dozens of Shots from One of the Master Photographers of the Middle of the 20th Century |
| Getting Rid of Arizona (Once and for All) |
C. A. Amantea | [Article] | All the Reasons We Should Force Mexico To Reclaim that Wretched State |
| C'est Absurde
Le Pacte des Loups |
Dr. Phage | [Article] | Review of an Impossibly Paradoxical Movie |
| Paris' Hairy Bottom Street | Graham Robb | [Reading] | Odd Names Given to the Streets in Beaubourg |
| The Perfect Baby | Polly Samson | (Bloomsbury) | What Happens if You Find Your New Kid Is Well (Cough) Not Exactly Gorgeous |
| Arachnophobia | Jenny Diski | (LRB) | Terror in Face of the Chance Spider |
| Isabel's Corrido | Martín Espada | (University of Arizona Press) | Un Mariage de Convenance |
| Lo Prohibido | Renato Rosaldo | (University of Arizona Press) | Arresting the Children of the "Illegals" |
| Ghost Town
24 Hours B4 Arizona's SB 1070 |
Gerardo Pacheco Matus | (University of Arizona Press) | Leaving Town Before They Declare You An "Illegal" |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Fenugreek Fiddling Around in Handel's "Orlando" |
The Readers of RALPH | [Letters] |
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH |
| Our Favorite Wars | The Editors of RALPH | [List] | Fifteen Interesting Books, Readings, Poems And Articles About the Killing Fields |
| Red Cavalry* | Isaac Babel | (Pushkin Press) | The Writings of the Brilliant Bolshevik War Correspondent from the Crimea, 1920 |
| Do No Harm
Stories of Life, Death, And Brain Surgery |
Henry Marsh | (Thomas Dunne / St. Martin's) | An English Neurosurgeon Talks about The Scariest Part of Working on Your Brain |
| The Sonoran Desert
A Literary Field Guide |
Eric Magrane Christopher Cokinos Editors |
(University of Arizona Press) | A Charming Visit (with Poetry and Pictures) To One of the Hottest Places on Earth |
| The Abundance Essays Old and New |
Annie Dillard | (Brilliance Audio) | One of America's Great Stylists With a Dozen or So Old (But Good) Articles |
| No Picnic on Mount Kenya | Felice Renuzzi | (MacLehose Press) | Three Italians Escape from a POW Camp To Climb Mount Kenya (And Then Return) |
| Someone Is Watching | Joy Fielding Read by Christina Traister |
(Brilliance Audio) | The Story of a Rape - - - And What It Does to the Psyche |
| Unexpected Journey
A Physician's Life in the Shadow of Polio |
Lauro S. Halstead, M. D. | (Amazon) | After Developing Polio in the Early 50's Halstead Goes to Medical School and Becomes One of the World's Experts on Rehabilitation |
| Flying Blind*
One Man's Adventures Battling Buckthorn, Making Peace with Authority, and Creating a Home for Endangered Bats |
Don Mitchell | (Chelsea Green) | Two Old Hippies Move to Vermont And Become Saviors to the Indiana Bat |
| Norwood[O]* | Charles Portis | (Simon & Schuster) | The Works of Portis Are Designated To Be Among the Most Pure of American Novels |
| The Naked and the Dead[G] | Norman Mailer | (Picador USA) | One of the Best Novels of WWII Revisited |
| Taking Haiti[O]
Military Occupation and the Culture of U. S. Imperialism 1915 - 1940 |
Mary A. Renda | (Chapel Hill) | Another Tale of America's Self-Proclaimed Role in Saving the Heathen World from Itself |
| Happy Baby[G] | Stephen Elliott | (Picador) | An Elegant Presentation of One Man's Need for Pain |
| Viols and Rackett | Dr. Phage | [Article] | Three Americans Who Taught Us to Love Medieval and Renaissance Music |
| Trauma | Henry Marsh | [Reading] | A Conference of Neurosurgeons Deal with a Patient After a Trauma To His Brain |
| Dust | Annie Dillard | [Reading] | Things You Only Suspected - - - But Never Knew - - - about Dust |
| How to Kick a Duck[G] | Ed Zern | [Reading] | An Instructive Reading on The Mauling of Innocent Ducks |
| Bomber's Moon | Mike Harding | [Poem] | Reflections of the Mass Bombng of Germany During WWII |
| Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands (The Seven Commandments of Joe Louis) |
Declan Ryan | [Poem] | Joe Louis and His Fight with Primo Carnera |