ARTICLES
The Plot To Change The World
Part I
"The United State and Russia
had been rattling nuclear swords at each other
for almost a decade.
Anyone with more than a pea-brain
knew that sooner or later ---
either by error or on purpose ---
the two countries were going to be
sending off the missiles."
Part II
"Thus, I could have
the station of my dreams,
albeit on the other end
of the country. But to do so,
I had to trash some of the ideals
that had guided me so far."

READINGS
World War I --- A New Kind of War
Part I
"Reticence in discussing violence
is particularly unfortunate in the case of
the Great War, for one
important characteristic of this
four-and-a-half-year conflict
is its unprecedented level of violence."
Part II
"The soldiers spoke spontaneously of
Verwvüstungschlacht.
a difficult word to translate,
which combines the ideas of ruin,
devastation and butchery and that
emphasizes the human slaughter involved."

POETRY
Our Bodies Are Like Maps
"After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma."
Mother and Father
"I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it --- she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die."

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month

GENERAL INDEX
A complete list of all books reviewed in RALPH,
arranged by title, including author, subject, and publisher,
plus a listing of all readings, articles and poems
that have appeared since 1994.

A PITHY SAMPLE
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"

SUBSCRIBE
Help perpetuate honest, noisy, pesky book reviews.
With your $25 subscription, you get
a free copy of one or more of the titles from
Mho & Mho Works