Twelve Stinkers
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
12 Books from 2006
That We Feel Are
The Very Worst

Mencken:
The American Iconoclast
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
[Oxford University Press]
The Writings, Social and
Political Life and Loves of the
Terror from Baltimore

Apt. 301
Will Anderson
Yewtree Press
Photograph Album, with Interviews,
of Would-Be Male Models

The Avenger
Takes His Place:
Andrew Johnson and
The Forty-Five Days that
Changed the Nation
Howard Means
[Harcourt]
A History of the
Days Immediately Following the
Seventeenth President's
Inauguration

Tigerland:*
And Other
Unintended
Destinations
Eric Dinerstein
[Island/Shearwater]
A Charming Retelling
of the Events in the Life
of a Bat-Catching Naturalist

Brides and Sinners
In El Chuco
Christine Granados
[University of Arizona]
Stories of Hard Lives
of the Mexican-Americans of El Paso

Untamed Seas:[G]
One Woman's True Story of
Shipwreck and Survival
Deborah Scaling Kiley
[Mariner]
Surviving at Sea
(with a Bunch of Crazies)

Uncoded Woman[B]
Anne-Marie Oomen
[Milkweed]
Poems of Rough Love
(Drawn from the U. S.
Defense Mapping Agency)

Howl on Trial:[B]
The Battle for
Free Expression
Bill Morgan and
Nancy J. Peters, Editors
[City Lights]
Howls from the 50s;
The Trial of Allen Ginsberg's
Barbaric Yawp

Jagged with Love
Susanna Childress
[Wisconsin]
Poems on Love and Travel
and Birds and Passion
and Tears

Mme. Spivy
Madness at RALPH
John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Dancing Under the Red Star
RALPH Goes Commercial
Wikipedia and Nature Magazine
Louis XVI and Peanut Butter
Samuel Pepys' Catamaran
Charlie Rose Blowing Brass
Rock Gardening in the Ukraine
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings,
Correspondence, and
Any of the 3,000 (or More)
Pictures, Drawings, and
Photographs
That Have Appeared
Over the Past Thirteen Years

The Museum
Dr. Phage
[Article]
When the Skeletal Remains
Come Alive at the
Museum of Natural History.

How Not to Lie
Philip Roth
[Reading]
The Speech of a Wife
Badly Wronged

Going Bats
Eric Dinerstein
[Reading]
How to Love
(and Study)
Nocturnal Winged
Mammals

I Inspect My Face
Susanna Childress
[Poem]
A Face After Weeping
"The Death of
The Ball Turret
Gunner"
"Hope"
Randall Jarrell
[Verse]
Two Poems from the Forties

Issue #158
www.ralphmag.org/EJ/indexEJ.html
Early Spring 2007

Eyes to See Otherwise[G]
Ojos de otro Mirar
Homero Aridjis
(New Directions)
Contemporary Poetry from Latin America

The Sights Along the Harbor[B]
New and Collected Poems
Harvey Shapiro
(Wesleyan)
Poetry from New York City

An Alphabetical Life:[B]
Living It Up in
The World of Books
Wendy Werris
(Carroll & Graf)
A Publisher's Rep Tells Her Story

Many Worlds in One[B]
The Search for Other Universes
Alex Vilenkin
(Hill and Wang)
Obscure Aspects of Physics,
Time, and the Universe

Flashlights
Ed Rossman
[Article]
The Prep School Culture of the 1950s

Facing Down Evil
Life on the Edge as an
FBI Hostage Negotiator
Clint Van Zandt
(Putnam)
Negotiating with Those Who Take Hostages

Jorie Graham
Aquiles Nazoa
Apt. 301
Maori Tattooing
Joachim Stempel
Barney Rosset
Samuel Pepy's Catamaran
H. L. Mencken
Dr. Paul Nickel
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings,
Correspondence, and
Any of the 3,000 (or More)
Pictures, Drawings, and
Photographs
That Have Appeared
Over the Past Thirteen Years

I Golfed Across Mongolia
How an Improbable Adventure
Helped Me Rediscover
The Spirit of Golf
(And Life)
André Tolmé
(Thunder's Mouth Press)
Going Across Mongolia with a #3 Iron

Telling True Stories
A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the
Nieman Foundation at Harvard University
Mark Kramer
Wendy Call
Editors
(Plume)
Fifty-Two Professionals Reveal
The Secret of Nonfiction Writing

Oil on the Brain*
Adventures from the Pump
To the Pipeline
Lisa Margonelli
(Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
A Riotous Account of
The Dark Energy Going from
Well to Gas Tank

The Painted Desert
Land of Wind and Stone
Scott Thybony
David Edwards,
Photographer
(University of Arizona)
A Sparing Account of the
History and the Present
of the Painted Desert

From an Autobiography
Harvey Shapiro
[Poem]
The Wonders of Growing Up
In the Grave of Another

Arachnophobia
Jenny Diski
[Reading]
Spider Fear and Fear
Of Spider Fear Workshops

The Ice Palace
That Melted Away[G] How Good Design
Enhances Our Lives
Bill Stumpf
(Minnesota)
A Futurist Trying
To Make Our Lives
More Interesting

[B]To be found under "Brief Reviews"
[G]Great Reviews of the Past
*Indicates a book that we found of especial merit

Issue #159
www.ralphmag.org/EK/indexEK.html
Mid-Spring 2007

Guide to Pruning
What, When, Where &
How to Prune for a
More Beautiful Garden
Cass Turnbull
(Sasquatch)
A Master Gardener
Tells Us How Not
To Prune Prune Trees

Wanting Enlightenment
Is a Big Mistake
Teachings of Zen Master
Seung Sahn
Hyon Gak, Editor
(Shambhala)
The Late Korean Buddhist in
Fifty Short, Pithy Stories

African Intimacies*
Race, Homosexuality,
and Globalization
Neville Hoad
(Minnesota)
A Rich Study of Neo-Colonialism
in the Guise of
Religious Intolerance

The Somme*
The Coward
A. D. Gristwood
(South Carolina)
Trench-Warfare Through
The Eyes of Someone Who
Did It (For Two Years)

Best American
Magazine Writing 2006
Graydon Carter,
Coordinator
(Columbia University Press)
Sixteen Articles, Reviews and Stories ---
Reputed to Be the Best of
The Year 2006

Learning To Fall[G]
The Blessings of
An Imperfect Life
Philip Simmons
(Bantam)
A Writer with
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Ruminates on the Loss of Body
(But Not Hope)

Suicide [B]
Pastoral Responses
Loren L. Townsend
(Abingdon)
Religious Answers for
Would-Be (and/or Unsuccessful)
Suicides

True Meditation[B]
Discover the Freedom
Of Pure Awareness
Adyashanti
(Sounds True)
A Young Buddhist on Awareness

The Best Buddhist
Writing 2006[B]
Melvin McLeod Editor
(Shambhala)
Thirty-Five Articles ---
Purportedly the Best --- o
n Buddhism

Northwest Art,
Charles Krafft,
Edward Curtis,
Benedicte Wrensted,
The Rooster in the Wristwatch
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings,
Correspondence, and
Any of the 3,000 (or More)
Pictures, Drawings, and
Photographs
That Have Appeared
Over the Past Thirteen Years

Hugh Gregory Gallagher
(October 18, 1932 - July 13, 2004)
L. W. Milam
Memorial Article
The Man Who Framed
American Disability Rights Remembered

His Picture Nowhere
Joshua Clark
[Reading]
A Reporter in Buras, Mississippi,
Shortly After Katrina
Passed Through

What the
Cults Believe
Irving Robertson
(The Moody Bible Institute)
Christian Attacks on the Mormons,
the Unity Church, and the
Rosicrucians by the Moody
Bible Institute

Issue #160
www.ralphmag.org/EL/indexEL.html
Late Late Spring 2007

Resolute:
The Epic Search for
The Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the
Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship
Martin W. Sandler
(Sterling)
The search for the Northwest Passage
and the Search for the Searchers

Fighting for Franco[B]
International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain
during the Spanish Civil War, 1936 - 39
Judith Keene
(Hambledon Continuum)
Biographical Notes on the 1300 or so American,
Irish, English, Portuguese, and Russians Who
Fought the Spanish Republic

The Collected Poems of
Muriel Rukeyser[B]
Janet E. Kaufman
Anne F. Herzog, Editors
(University of Pittsburgh Press)
600 Poems from the
20th Century American Poet

Rogha Dánta
Selected Poems
Gabriel Rosenstock
(Cló Iar-Chonnachta)
A Selection of Poems by the Gaelic Beat

Locating Medical History[B]
The Stories and Their Meanings
Frank Huisman,
John Harley Warner, Editors
(The Johns Hopkins University Press)
The History of Medical History

Cycles of Time and Meaning
in the Mexican Books of Fate
Elizabeth Hill Boone
(University of Texas Press)
A Review of the Nine Existing Codices
of Pre-Conquest Mexico

Goodnight, Texas*
William J. Cobb
(Unbridled Books)
A Novel about the Blighted Coast of Texas
(And Its Blighted Inhabitants)

Ho-Chunk
Autobiography
American Indian Courtship
Crashing Thunder
[Reading]
Wisconsin Indian Courtship Routines

The Rooster in the Wristwatch
Apt. 301
Unprincipled Attack on Buddhism
This Bloody Life
Time Leap
Relativity and Alzheimer's
VacuumKitty
The Huns at the Gates
RALPH Goes Commercial
Dr. Laura and E-Mails
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings,
Correspondence, and
Any of the 3,000 (or More)
Pictures, Drawings, and
Photographs
That Have Appeared
Over the Past Thirteen Years

On Looking:
Essays
Lia Purpura
(Sarabande Books)
Unusual Essays from
One Who
(Apparently) Looks

The Songs of
Wild Birds
Lang Elliott
(Houghton Mifflin)
Several Dozen Wild Birds --- and
their Calls --- Identified

Emanuel Swedenborg's Journal of Dreams
Commentary by Wilson van Dusen
(Swedenborg Foundation)
An Introduction to the
Dreams of the Swedish Mystic

The Zen Monks and
The Governor
Zen Master
Seung Sahn
[Reading]
A Tale from the Korean Zen Master

Issue #161
www.ralphmag.org/EM/indexEM.html
Very Early Summer 2007

Dada East
The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire
Tom Sandqvist
(MIT)
Seeking Out the Earliest Roots of Dada

The Volcano Adventure Guide
Rosaly Lopes
(Cambridge University)
How to Find (and Explore)
the 1,500 Volcanoes --- in the World

When the Impossible Happens
Adventures in Non-Ordinary Realities
Stanislav Grof
(Sounds True)
Journeys in the Mind ---
Going Everywhere Your Mother
Told You Not to Go

The Edge of Sadness
Edwin O'Connor
(Loyola Classics)
Being a Good Catholic Father:
Drinking, Despair, and the General Blues

Farewell to the
Starlight in Whiskey
Barton Sutter
(BOA Editions)
Poetry from the
Upper Middle West Lake Country

Serve It Forth[G]
Mary F. K. Fisher
(North Point Press)
Memoirs of One of the First
To Lead Us From Marshmallow Salads and
Overcooked Roast Beef

Dream Whip No. 14[B]*
Bill Brown
(Microcosm Publishing)
A (Modern) Classic American
On the Road Trip

To Have and Have Not [B]
Ernest Hemingway
(Recorded Books)
Classic Hemingway at His Best
(and Worst)

Gimpel the Fool[B] And Other Stories
Isaac Bashevis Singer
(Audio Partners)
Three Old Singer Tales of
European Jewish Life

Bad RALPH
RALPH Goes Commercial II
"Geek Love"
Gray-Hair Pornographia
The Lusitania
Charles Krafft
My War Gone By I Love It So
Stephen Hawking
Suspected Anarchy at RALPH
Gravity-Fed Water Systems
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings,
Correspondence, and
Any of the 3,000 (or More)
Pictures, Drawings, and
Photographs
That Have Appeared
Over the Past Thirteen Years

Open When Needed
Dianna Robin Dennis
[Article]
Memories of an Eccentric Family in Maine

Ángel
Carlos Amantea
[Reading]
A Tale of Death in Santa Clarita

From Versailles To Cybernetics
Gregory Bateson
[Reading]
Thoughts on Revenge and
World Wars I & II

Tradition
Quan Berry
[Poetry]
Female Circumcision

Issue #162
www.ralphmag.org/EN/indexEN.html
Mid-Summer 2007

Past Tents
The Way We Camped
Susan Snyder
(Heyday/Bancroft Library)
Camping in the Mountains
A Hundred Years Ago

Dancing With Joy:
99 Poems
Roger Housden
(Harmony)
A Selection of Poems
To Make Us Happy
(If Not Sane)

What Do I Say
Talking with Patients
About Spirituality
Elizabeth Johnston Taylor
(Templeton Foundation)
Advice on Reaching Out
To the Sick or Dying

American Windmills
An Album of
Historic Photographs
T. Lindsay Baker
(University of Oklahoma)
200 Photographs from
The Heyday of Wind Power

The Bloomsday Dead*
Adrian McKinty
(Blackstone Audio)
Detective Novel about
The Irish-American Mafia
in Belfast

Cold Skin*
Albert Sánchez Piñol
(Canongate)
Life on a Desert Island
With Creatures that Try to Eat You
(In the Night)

An Old Wife's Tale[G]
My Seven Decades
In Love and War
Midge Decter
(Regan/Harper/Collins)
Memoirs from a Decidedly Snappy
Older Conservative

Hiroshima[B]*
John Hersey
Edward Asner, Reader
(Audio Partners)
The 1946 Journalistic Masterpiece
in Reading

Telegraph Days[B]
Larry McMurtry
Annie Potts, Reader
(Recorded Books)
The Old West

A Caribbean Mystery[B]
Agatha Christie
Rosalind Ayers, Reader
(Audio Partners)
Murder on a Caribbean Island

My French Whore[B]
Gene Wilder
Scott Brick, Reader
(Books on Tape)
Novel of WWI and an American Spy

Dada
Billy Joel
Wild Birds
Waking Up in A Just-Buried Coffin
The RALPH Folio
The West Coast Review of Books
Auditory Hallucinations
Spatial Location and
Persecutory Delusions
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings,
Correspondence, and
Any of the 3,000 (or More)
Pictures, Drawings, and
Photographs
That Have Appeared
Over the Past
Thirteen Years

Pier-Luigi Zucchini
L. W. Milam
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Biography of the Famous
17th Century Composer

Dream Whip #14
Bill Brown
[Reading]
Travel in New York City, Vienna, Zagreb

A Plague Of Locusts
Ellsworth Huntington
[Reading]
Travel in Turkey
A Hundred Years Ago

The Search for
Unpolluted Drinking Water
Steven Johnson
[Reading]
A Selection from The Ghost Map

Instant Sonnet
Lope Féliz de Vega Carpio
[Poem]
A Poem about
Writing a Poem

Cow Worship
Gerald Stern
[Poem]
Kissing Cows

Grammar
Tony Hoagland
[Poem]
Conjugating Verbs
(And Love)

Issue #163
www.ralphmag.org/EO/indexEO.html
Late Mid-Summer 2007

Twenty-One Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Links to the Articles, Reviews,
Poems, Readings and Letters in
RALPH that Continue to Receive
The Most Monthly Hits

The Past from Above
Aerial Photographs of
Archaeological Sites
Georg Gerster
Charlotte Trümpler,
Editors
(The J. Paul Getty Museum)
Two-Hundred Fifty Ancient Sites
As Photographed (and Described) from Above

The Collected Poems of
Tennessee Williams[B]
David Roessel,
Nicholas Moschovakis
Editors
(New Directions)
Occasional (and Often Merry)
Poems of the Dramatist

An Absolute Gentleman[B]
R. M. Kinder
(Counterpoint)
Anatomy of a Serial Killer
In Novel Form

Body, Remember[B]
Kenny Fries
(Wisconsin)
Memoirs of Growing Up
Poor, Disabled and Gay

My Brilliant Career
Dr. Phage
[Article]
How to Survive Academic Meetings;
Basic Responsibilities of PhDs;
Cats

Dappled Things
Michael Foley
(Dufour Editions)
Parental Loves
(and Others)

Glory in a Camel's Eye[G]
Trekking through the
Moroccan Sahara
Jeffrey Tayler
(Houghton Mifflin)
Forty Days and Forty Nights
By Camel Across Morocco

Fasting
Spiritual Freedom
Beyond Our Appetites
Lynne M. Baab
(Formatio)
Many Different
Forms of Fasting Described

Ham and the Moon
Jesse Lee Kercheval
(University of Iowa)
A Great Home-Cooked Meal
(While Dying)

My Life In France
Julia Child
(Random House Audio)
The French School of Cooking
(And of Living) Remembered

Neither/Nor
W. H. Fowler
Modern English Usage
"Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer"
La Uña del Gato
Multiple Personality Disorders
Functional Auditory Hallucinations
My Bloody Life
Reymundo Sanchez
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings,
Correspondence, and
Any of the 3,000 (or More)
Pictures, Drawings, and
Photographs
That Have Appeared
Over the Past Thirteen Years

Medieval Obscenities
Nicola McDonald, Editor
(University of York)
Some of More Lurid Passages
Drawn from the Tenth -
Fifteenth Century Poems,
Church Ornaments and Official Records

The Verbover Rebbe
Michael Chabon
[Reading]
The Head Rabbi from
The Yiddish Policemen's Union

On Retirement*
75 Poems
Robin Chapman,
Judith Strasser,
Editors
(University of Iowa)
A Multitude of Poems on Ageing

Mornings on Horseback
David McCullough
(Recorded Books)
The First Thirty or So Years
Of the Oyster Bay Republican

World-Wide Slum Growth
Jeremy Harding
[Reading]
The Coming of the
Mega-Slums

The Yiddish Policemen's Union*
Michael Chabon
(Harper Audio/Recorded Books)
A Dark Detective Story about
"The Frozen Chosen"

Issue #164
www.ralphmag.org/EP/indexEP.html
Very Early Fall 2007

Twelve Stars
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Books from the First Half of
The Year that Were Our All-time Favorites

Frogs:
Inside Their
Remarkable World
Ellin Beltz
(Firefly)
Pretty Frogs and Their Progeny

Debussy
The Quiet Revolutionary
Victor Lederer
(Amadeus Press)
The Life and Times of
the Romantic Composer

The Book
That Changed
My Life
71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate
The Books that
Matter Most to Them
Roxanne J. Coady
Joy Johannessen, Editors
(Bantam)
A Compendium of
Titles that Rocked Writers' Hearts

Thoreau's Laundry*
Ann Harleman
(Southern Methodist University Press)
Twelve Short Stories by
A Modern Master

True Grit
Charles Portis
(Recorded Books)
The Wry Old West

Generals Die in Bed*
Charles Yale Harrison
(Annick/Firefly)
A WWI Novel from
1920s Canada

The Ghost Map:
The Story of London's
Most Terrifying Epidemic ---
And How it Changed Science,
Cities, and the Modern World
Steven Johnson
(Riverhead)
Dr. John Snow and Cholera

Horse Latitudes
Paul Muldoon
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Jim-Jams from Princeton

Where Stuff
Comes From:[G]
How Toasters, Toilets,
Cars, Computers, and
Many Other Things
Come to Be
As They Are
Harvey Molotch
(Routledge)
A Strange (and Funny)
Compiliation of the
Origin of Things

Ooga-Booga[B]*
Frederick Seidel
(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Weird (and Wonderful)
Poetry from East Hampton
(And Thereabouts)

Not that You Asked[B]
Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions
Steve Almond
(Random House)
Essays from a Somewhat Funny Almond

Falling Man[B]
Don DeLillo
(Recorded Books)
9/11 Through the Eyes of
A Somewhat Jaded Novelist

Sleeping in Academia
Dada
Old Texas Towns
Snakes and Earrings
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH
That Have Appeared
Over the Past Thirteen Years

Samovars and Bedlam
Michael Ingall
[Article]
Memories of Working in
A Psychiatric
Unit in Boston

Blue-John and Bust-Head
Charles Portis
[Reading]
Looking for a Cowboy
Detective in Arkansas
A Century Ago

An Interlude
In the War
Charles Yale Harrison
[Reading]
WWI Soldiers on Billet

The South Berkeley Branch Closes
Ishmael Reed
[Poem]
Reading from 75 Poems
On Retirement

Riddle of Self-Worth
Christopher Kennedy
[Poem]
Dinner at Six for the Cannibal

East Hampton Airport
Frederick Seidel
[Poem]
Long Island Airport (In Verse)

Issue #165
www.ralphmag.org/EQ/indexEQ
Mid-Fall 2007

Vintage
Amis[G]
Martin Amis
(Vintage)
Essays and Fiction of the
Contemporary Literary Figure

Las Soldaderas:[B]
Women of the Mexican Revolution
Elena Poniatowska
(Cinco Punto Press)
Pictures of Women from the
Revolution: 1912 - 1920

The Secret River[B]
Kate Grenville
(Canongate)
Novel about English Prisoners
and the Aboriginal Wars of Australia

Openwork[B]
Adria Bernardi
(Southern Methodist University Press)
Novel about Italian
Immigrants in America

When Illness Goes Public[B]:
Celebrity Patients and
How We Look at Medicine
Barron H. Lerner
(Johns Hopkins University Press)
Thirteen Stories of the Famous
(and Not-So-Famous) Ill

Unknown Friends
Carl Dennis
(Penguin Books)
Poems by the Pulitzer Prize Winner

Exit Ghost
Philip Roth
(Houghton Mifflin)
Zuckerman Revisited
(With Diapers)

Carl Friedrich Gauss
Meets Immanuel Kant
Daniel Kehlmann
[Reading]
Meeting of the
Two Famous Scientists

Grass
Carl Dennis
[Reading]
God and Lawn-Covering
(Without Fertilizer)

Measuring the World*
Daniel Kehlmann
(Pantheon)
A Fictional Retelling
(With Gusto) of the
Life of the Scientist

Elena Pat
Mora
[Reading]
Poem of Immigrant Women

Ram Dass
Dada
Old Texas Towns
Unforeseen Consequences of
Cataract Operations
Edgar Allen Poe
D. H. Lawrence
Trumpets
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Medieval and
Renaissance Treasures*
Paul Williamson,
Peta Motture,
Editors
(Victoria and Albert/Abrams)
Works of Art from
600 A. D. - 1600 A. D.

The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
(Books on Tape)
Indian (and French &
Indian War) Lore from 1826

Muni Court (and the Ants)
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Some Thoughts on Municipal Court
Jury Service (and Intractable Insects)

Your Own, Sylvia:
A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath
Stephanie Hemphill
(Knopf)
Two Hundred Poems about
The Life of Sylvia Plath

Defining the World:*
The Extraordinary Story of
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Henry Hitchings
(Picador)
A History of the First Real
Dictionary of the English Language

The Making of
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
Henry Hitchings
[Reading]
The Room Described
In which Johnson Made the Dictionary

The Laws Field Guide
To the Sierra Nevada
John Muir Laws
(Heyday Books)
The Birds and Beasts (and
The Scat) of the High Sierras

Issue #166
www.ralphmag.org/ER/indexER.html
Late Fall 2007

Fire in the City
Girolamo Savonarola and the Struggle for
The Soul of Renaissance Florence
Lauro Martines
(Oxford)
The Life and Times of the
Inventor of "The Bonfire of the Vanities"

Analogue
Zoe Leonard
(Western Center for the Arts/
MIT Press)
Stark photographs from Uganda, Cuba,
Mexico, Chicago, New York

Where Have All
The Soldiers Gone?*
The Transformation of
Modern Europe
James J. Sheehan
(Houghton Mifflin)
How Europe Lost Its Militaristic Impulses

Mr. Sebastian and
The Negro Magician
Daniel Wallace
(Recorded Books)
Life and Times in an Old Circus
in the Old South, 1950s

Trespass
Valerie Martin
(Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
A middle-class New Yorker Falls in
Love with a Croatian
(and Her Family)

The Canon
A Whirligig Tour of
The Beautiful Basics of Science
Natalie Angier
(HighBridge Audio)
A Tour through the Five Basic Sciences

Prometheus
The Triumph and Tragedy of
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird
Martin J. Sherwin
(Blackstone Audio)
The Life of One that Some Dubbed
"The Galileo of the 20th Century"

The Illness Narratives[G]
Suffering, Healing, and
The Human Condition
Arthur Kleinman
(Basic)
A Doctor, Working with "Incurables,"
Describes His Feelings

Sex Texts from
The Bible*[B]
Selections Annotated and Explained
Teresa J. Hornsby
(SkyLight Paths)
One of the Faithful Explains the Why of
Certain Scandalous Parts of The Bible

The Last Voyage Of Columbus[B]
Martin Dugard
(Recorded Books)
The Fourth (and Last)
(And Perhaps the Worst)
Of the Navigator's Trips

Ambers Aglow:[B]
An Anthology of
Contemporary Polish
Women's Poetry
Regina Grol, Editor
(Host Publications)
Twenty-Nine Poets and
Two Hundred Poems
From Modern Poland

What Happens to Review Copies
of Books Sent to RALPH?
Also: H. L. Mencken
Wislawa Szymborska
Claude Debussy
The Dew-Line
Wall Street and
Ads in RALPH
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Dew-Line Bears
Paul Nickel
[Article]
Should We Fret about
The Polar Bears?

Comme Les Autres
Jon Gallant
[Article]
Growing Up with "A Downser" Child

Filming in Africa
Alexander Kluge
[Reading]
The Revolution
(DVDs over Film)

Friesenhahn's Act
Alexander Kluge
[Reading]
A Circus Act
(Complete with Hyenas)

A Gypsy Child
Salomea Kapuscinska
[Poetry]
Contemporary Polish Poetry

The Touch and The Taste
Urszula M. Benka
[Poetry]
Contemporary Polish Poetry

Advice for Her
Who Was Named
A Woman
Julia Hartwig
[Poetry]
Contemporary Polish Poetry

Issue #167
www.ralphmag.org/ES/indexES.html
Very Early Winter 2007

Afghanistan
Paul Clammer (Lonely Planet)
How to Get into,
Around (and Out of)
this Treasured Travel-Spot

Beethoven's Oeuvre
Dr.Phage
[Article]
Thoughts on Available
Recordings of the Master

Beethoven:
The Universal Composer
Edmund Morris
(Recorded Books)
A Concise (and Entertaining)
Biography of the Composer

Chopin:[B]
A Listener's Guide to
The Master of the Piano
Victor Lederer
(Amadeus Press)
A Biography (with CD*)
of the Romantic Master

Beowulf:*[B]
A New Verse Translation
Seamus Heaney
(Recorded Books)
Life and Good Times in
10th Century Mead Halls

Gentlemen of The Road[B]
Michael Chabon
(Random House Audio)
Other 10th Century Antic Vagabondages

The Coldest Winter:
A Stringer in
Liberated Europe
Paula Fox
(Picador)
Memories of London, Paris,
and Warsaw --- 1946 - 1947

The Dew-Line Bears
The Field Guide to
the Sierra Nevada
Mark O'Brien and
Self-Publishing
Hitler and Syphilis
Sylvia Plath
Contact with the Deceased
(Stepwise Technique)
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Inventing Los Alamos:
The Growth of
An Atomic Community
Jon Hunner
(Oklahoma)
The Creation, Life, and Old Age
of a Very Special City

Leopoldo Méndez:*
Revolutionary Art and
The Mexican Print
Deborah Caplow
(University of Texas Press)
A Luxurious History of
One of the Supreme
Artists of 20th Century Mexico

Molvanîa[G]
Santo Cilauro, et. al.
(Overlook Press)
A Strange Travel-Guide to a
Very Strange Country

The New Earth from Above:
365 Days
Yann Arthus-Bertrand
(Abrams)
A Stupendous and Gorgeous
Day-by-Day Overview
of the World

A Society Marching
to Its Certain Ruin
Barbara Tuchman
[Reading]
The Edwardian Age
Seen in Self-Destruct

Who Beats Your Heart?
L. W. Milam
[Article]
What to Do When
They Stick a Pacemaker
in Your Chest

Ticket to Exile:
A Memoir
Adam David Miller
(Heyday Books)
A Soulful Memoir of
Growing Up Black
in South Carolina

The Birth of the
Unknown Soldier
James J. Sheehan
[Reading]
Western Nations Learning
How to Commemorate
the Millions Who Died in Battle

The Year of
The Fog
Michelle Richmond
(Blackstone)
A Novel about
a Missing Child

Issue #168
www.ralphmag.org/ET/indexET.html
Mid-Winter 2007 - 2008

American Skin
Ken Bruen
(Kate's Mystery Books/Justin, Charles & Co.)
Yet Another Tale of American Mayhem

Tibetan Cooking[B]
Recipes for Daily Living, Celebration and Ceremony
Elizabeth Esther Kelly
(Snow Lion)
Food (and Caring) for Dignitaries and
Friends in the Tibetan Style

The Power of Flies[B]
Lydie Salvayre
(Dalkey Archive)
Story of a Man
Obsessed with Blaise Pascal

Hypnotherapy, Schizophrenia and
Drinking a Glass of Water
Jay Haley
[Interview]
Thoughts of One of the Originators of
the Concept of Family Therapy (and "The Double Bind")

Starting Out in the Evening
Brian Morton
(Harcourt)
A Novel about a Forgotten Novelist

The Airmen and the Headhunters
A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen
and the Unlikeliest Rescue of
World War II
Judith M. Heimann
(Harcourt)
Seven U. S. Airmen Lost for Six Months in Borneo, 1944

Korean Love Poems[G]
Tom Crawford
[Poetry]
Ginkgo Trees and Love in Kwangju

The Seder
The New RALPH
(Without the Name)
Sexy Haiku
Robin D. Gill
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

It's "Nudnick," Not "Noodnick"
S. J. Perelman
[Interview]
Back-and-Forth with the Curmudgeon of
20th Century America

A Poem of Hope
P. J. Weise
[Poem]
Contemporary American Poetry

Contemporary Russian Poetry:
An Anthology
Evgeny Bunimovich
J. Kates, Editors
(Dalkey Archive)
Works of Fourty-Four Poets from
the Last Half of the 20th Century

Saraminda*
José Sarney
(Aliform Publishing)
A Lusty Novel from
the Gold-Fields of South America

Isaac Bashevis Singer and
The Lower East Side[G]
Bruce Davidson, Photographer
(Mead Art Museum/
University of Wisconsin)
One of Singer's Great Stories
Accompanied by Fifty Photographs

The Woman
Sandzar Yanyshev
[Poem]
Contemporary Russian Poem

Woodward and Bernstein
Life in the Shadow of Watergate
Alicia C. Shepard
(Wiley)
Scandal (or Lack of It)
In the Lives of the Washington Post Duo

www.ralphmag.org/EU/indexEU.html
Issue #169
Late Winter 2007 - 2008

The 3rd Ave. El.
Dr. Phage
[Article]
A Visit to the Late Great
New York City Transportation System

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth
Poems 2004 - 2006
Adrienne Rich
(Norton)
Contemporary American Poetry

After the Fall*
Poems Old and New
Edward Field
(University of Pittsburgh Press)
Words from an Old East Coast Bohemian

Ten Poems to Change
Your Life Again & Again[B]
Roger Housden
(Harmony Books)
Another Series of Poems with Commentary

Romance in the Ivory Tower[B]
The Rights and Liberty of Conscience
Paul R. Abramson
(The MIT Press)
Professor-Student Love
Seen as a Civil Right

Battle Creek[B]
James Sallis
(Walker)
Murder Mystery from Tennessee

How Now Shall We Live?[G]
Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy
(Tyndale House)
Religions Old and New through the
Eyes of the Ex-Nixon Aide

Curse of the Cat Woman
Edward Field
[Poem]
Modern American Poetry

The Farther Shore*
Matthew Eck
(Milkweed)
Story of an Unknown War in an Unamed Country

Sex and Violence and
the Federal Communications Commission
L. W. Milam
[Article]
How to Get Broadcasters to Clean Up
The Airwaves without Government Intervention

The Jew of Home Depot
And Other Stories
Max Apple
(Johns Hopkins)
Stories of Love and
Cultural Wars in Texas

Charles Colson and
How Now Shall We Live
Quantcast and Counting
Hits on the Internet
Foot Orthotics and RALPH
My Bloody Life
Clock and Skull
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

A Dynamic God
Living an Unconventional
Catholic Faith
Nancy Mairs
(Beacon Press)
Disability and Living
One's Own Faith

The Great Arc[G]
The Dramatic Tale of How India Was
Mapped and Everest Was Named
John Keay
(Harper Collins)
Adventures on Topography
(from 150 Years Ago)

The Queen Is in the Countinghouse
Leslie L. Seamans
[Poetry] Contemporary American Poetry

Echo Location
John M. Hull
[Reading]
How the Blind "See"
Objects by Feel

Winged Wonders
A Celebration of Birds in Human History
Peter Watkins & Jonathan Stockland
(BlueBridge)
Sixteen Birds Considered

Issue #170
www.ralphmag.org/EV/indexEV.html
Late Late Winter 2007 - 2008

Fifteen Stars
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Fifteen Great Books from
the Ultimate Months of 2007

The Seventh Well
Fred Wander
(Norton)
Times in Concentration Camps by the
Famous East German Writer

Real Stinkers
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Eight Recent Books We
Just Couldn't Get Through

My Father Says Grace[B]
Donald Platt
(Arkansas)
Lyrics about a Nursing Home for
the Very VeryOld

The Gateway[B]
T. M. McNally
(SMU)
Seven Short Stories from
the Dark Side

Sex & Isolation[B]
Bruce Benderson
(University of Wisconsin Press)
Essays on the Loss of the Old Times Square
and Hustling on the Internet

Churchbells
Guillaume Apollinaire
[Poem]
Translation by X. J. Kennedy

Crazy for God
How I Grew Up as One of the Elect,
Helped Found the Religious Right, and
Lived to take All (Or Almost All)
Of It Back
Frank Schaeffer
(Carroll & Graf)
Memoirs of a One-Time
Fundamentalist

The Exodus
J. M. Coetzee
[Reading]
What Happens When
the Soldiers Come to Town

The Electrical Century
Iwan Rhys Morus
[Reading]
The Selling of Power

Teach the Free Man*
Stories
Peter Nathaniel Malae
(Swallow)
Prison Life from the
Inside (and Out)

The Crazed[G]
Ha Jin
(Pantheon)
Caring for a Very Crazy
Old Man (Chinese Style)

Afghanistan by Paul Clammer
The 3rd Ave. El.
The Purpose of RALPH
Subagh Singh
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Murder of Mexican Musicians
C. Amantea
[Article]
The Reasons behind
Recent Violence to the South

Warm, Soft,
Chewy, Delicious
Flesh Tortillas
C. A. Amantea
[Article]
The Omnipresent Staple of Mexico

The Wisdom of Yoga
A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living
Stephen Cope
(Bantam)
The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali
as Set in Lenox, Mass.

In a Prominent
Bar in Secaucus*
New and Selected Poems, 1955 - 2007
X. J. Kennedy
(Johns Hopkins)
A Captivating Collection of Verse
by the American poet

Issue #171
www.ralphmag.org/EW/indexEW.html
Very Early Spring 2008

Twenty-Three Hits
The Readers of RALPH
[List]
Twenty-three Reviews, Readings,
Articles or Poems Most Often Called-up
by Our Readers.

Fulgencio Batista
From Revolutionary
to Strongman
Frank Argote-Freyre
(Rutgers University Press)
The First Forty Years in
the Life of the Cuban Dictator

"The Birth of History"
"The Prophet of Literature"
Roberto Bolaño
[Reading]
Two Choice Passages
from Amulet

The Surgeons[B]
Life and Death
In a Top Heart Center
Charles R. Morris
(Norton)
Top Cardiology Practitioners at
Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, New York

Amulet[B]*
Roberto Bolaño
(New Directions)
Street-Life and Lives of the Poets,
Mexico City, 1968

Cantos de Adolescencia
(1932 - 1937)[B]
Américo Paredes
B. V. Olguín
O. V. Barbosa,
Editors
(Arte Público Pess)
Early Poetry of the
Cancionero de la Frontera

Soup
Enid Dame
[Poetry]
Life in Brooklyn
(and the Vilna Ghetto)

The World at Night
Matthew Rohrer
[Poetry]
Getting Blind Drunk
in Brooklyn

Broken Land*
Poems of Brooklyn
Julia Spicher Kasdorf
Michael Tyrell,
Editors
(New York University Press)
Anthology of Poetry from
the Other Side of the East River

City Requiem, Calcutta[G]
Gender and the
Politics of Poverty
Ananya Roy
(University of Minnesota Press)
Life of the Urban Poor in India

Sister Bernadette's
Barking Dog*
The Quirky History
And Lost Art of
Diagramming Sentences
Kitty Burns Florey
(Harvest)
A Loving Study of the
Ancient Art of Parsing Sentences

Adverse Outcomes of
Cataract Operations
Multiple Personality Disorder
RALPH and Sunglasses
Cryptic Letters of the Month:
I Am Pretty Female
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The First Total War
Napoleon's Europe and
The Birth of Warfare
As We Know It
David A. Bell
(Houghton Mifflin)
The Birth (and Death) of
Massed Armies, 1792 - 1815

The Øresund Fixed Link
Jon Gallant
[Article]
The Connection Between Denmark
and Sweden Revealed

Couples Therapy
For the Disabled
Susan Parker
[Reading]
A Passage from Parker's
Tumbling After

Sibelius:
The Orchestral Music
David Hurwitz
(Amadeus Press)
The Seven (or Nine) Symphonies
ofthe Finnish Composer

Behind Closed Doors*
Her Father's House and
Other Stories of Sicily
Maria Messina
(The Feminist Press at CUNY)
Hard Times and the Poor
in Turn-of-the-Century Mistretta

The Most Paradoxical
of Paradoxes
[List]
The Readers of RALPH
A Collection of the Most Favored
"Paradoxes-of-the-Month"

Issue #172
www.ralphmag.org/EX/indexEX.html
Spring 2008

All-Time Hits from the Early Days of RALPH[G]
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Twenty-One Reviews, Readings,
Articles or Poems From the First Days of the Magazine.

The Song of Kahunsha
Anosh Irani
(Milkweed)
A Novel of the Lives of
Poor Street-Children in Bombay

Billionaire[B]
John D. MacArthur:
Empire Builder, Reluctant Philanthropist, Relentless Adversary
Nancy Kriplen
(Amacom)
A Quickie on the Insurance Magnate

Bill Mauldin[B]
A Life Up Front
Todd DePastino
(Norton)
The Life of the WWII Cartoonist

A View of The Ocean*[B]
Jon de Hartog
(Pantheon)
The Last Days of the Mother of the Author

Cancel Your Own
Goddam Subscription
Notes & Asides from National Review
William Buckley
(Basic Books)
The Late Editor's Writings on Everything Under the Sun

The Death of a Moth
Milorad Pavic
[Reading]
Why There Is Death in the World

"Gertrude Stein and Grammar"
Kitty Burns Florey
[Reading]
Diagramming, Grammar, and the American Poet

IN MEMORY OF THE HORSE DAVID,
WHO ATE ONE OF MY POEMS
James Wright
[Poem]
Obscurantist Poem on Literary
Eating Habits of Horses

Journey to the East
Le Corbusier
(MIT)
The Young Le Corbu in the Middle East, 1911

The Ethics of News Photographers
"The Weeping Frenchman"
Pekin Ducks
Poems of Brooklyn
Ezra Pound
The Barnes Foundation
Impressionism
World War One and Gas
Onanism and the Importance of Time
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

James Joyce and
The Glory of the Outhouse
Carlos Amantea
[Article]
Ulysses and the
Construction of "El Baño Seco"

Life Class
Pat Barker
(Doubleday)
Novel of English Painters
and World War I

Foreskin's Lament:*
A Memoir
Shalom Auslander
(Riverhead Books)
A Cockamanie Story of Growing Up
in the Contemporary Orthodox
Jewish Middle Class

Song of Welcome
Joseph Brodsky
[Poem]
Growing Up, Growing Old, Dying

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It*
The Parts of Speech
For Better and/or Worse
Ben Yagoda
(Broadway)
A Merry Chase through
the Parts of Speech in English

Issue #173
www.ralphmag.org/EY/indexEY.html
Late Spring 2008

Twenty Great Poems
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Twenty Poems from the
First Days of the Magazine

America's Child
A Woman's Journey
Through the Radical Sixties
Susan Sherman
(Curbstone)
Autobiography of a Feminist Radical

The Big Switch:
Rewiring the World,
From Edison to Google
Nicholas Carr
(Norton)
The Goods and Bads of the
Computer Age and the Internet

The Computer and
Centralized Power
Nicholas Carr
[Reading]
The Computer as
Reporter on Your Life

World over Water[B]
Robert Gibb
(Arkansas)
Poetry on American Radicals
In the Steel Mills

A Force of Nature[B]
The Frontier Genius of
Ernest Rutherford
Richard Reeves
(Atlas Books)
Life Story of the Scientist Who
Split the First Atom

In Search Of the Blues[B]
Marybeth Hamilton
(Basic)
The Myth of the Delta Blues Revealed

Sometimes I Feel Like
Stephen Hawking Must Feel
After A Bad Night
L. W. Milam
[Article]
The Real World of Disability

A Curious Earth
Gerard Woodward
(Norton)
Story of an Old but Respectable
Drunk in Modern-Day London

Neither - Nor
Reginal A. Fessenden &
The Caspian Sea
Synanon
Andrew Harvey
Azerbijan & Pakistan
H. L. Mencken
The Aedii Eechii
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Making of a
Tropical Disease:
A Short History of Malaria
Randall M. Packard
(Johns Hopkins)
The Facts about the World's
Most Debilitating Disease

Midlife
Joseph Millar
[Poem]
The Midlife Crises

Radical Compassion[G]
Finding Christ in the
Heart of the Poor
Gary Smith, S. J.
(Jesuit Way/Loyola)
Working with the Poor

Whatever You Do,
Don't Run*
True Tales of a
Botswana Safari Guide
Peter Allison
(The Lyons Press)
What Not to Do When Faced
With a Pride of Lions

The Slave Ship:
A Human History
Marcus Rediker
(Viking)
The Economic Facts of the Slave Trade

Tapping In:
A Step-By-Step Guide to
Activating Your Healing Resources
Through Bilateral Stimulation
Laurel Parnell
(Sounds True Books)
Physical Resources for Relieving Psychic Symptoms

Issue #174
www.ralphmag.org/EZ/indexEZ.html
Early Summer 2008

Immortal
Traci L. Slatton
(Delta)
The Horrors of 14th Century Italian Street Life

Taxi
Khaled Al Khamissi
(Aflame Books)
80,000 Reasons Not to Visit Cairo

The World on Fire
1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism
Anthony Read
(Norton)
Several Characters in Search of a Political Religion
(Including Lenin, Mother Jones, Tolstoi, and Churchill)

My Mother Wears Combat Boots
A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us
Jessica Mills
(AK)
Having and Caring for Babies
(While Being in Love with the "Subhumans")

When Huai Flowers Bloom
Stories of the Cultural Revolution
Shu Jiang Lu
(SUNY Press)
Surviving the Cultural Revolution

The Associates
Four Capitalists Who Created California
Richard Rayner
(Atlas & Co.)
Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker

The Accidental Explorer
Wayfinding in Alaska
Sherry Simpson
(Sasquatch)
How to Be Terrified on Foot in the Snows of Alaska
(With Your Friendly Dog)

The World's Most Dangerous Places[G]
Robert Young Pelton
(Fielding)
How to Be Terrified while on Vacation

Dragon Thunder[B]
My Life with Chögyam Trungpa
Diana J. Mukpo
(Shambhala)
Strange Times (and Stranger Parties) with the
Tibetan Buddhist Master

Natural Shocks[G]*
Richard Stern
(TriQuaterly/
Northwestern University)
Negative Capability and Goethe, Tolstoy,
Dr. Johnson, Sandy Koufax and the Sage of Vienna

Red Parrot Wooden Leg [B]
Gregorio Kohon
(Karnac)
Two Young Stoned Poets
Afloat in Rio de Janeiro

Flags in the Dust
Dugustus Goop
X. J. Kennedy
Bush Hog
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Think You
Czechoslovakian Recipes
Love Letters
Abortions
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Lifestyles of the Blind and Paralyzed:
Mark O'Brien
L. W. Milam
[Article]
A Short Obituary on the
Foremost Disabled Poet

Leadbelly and John Lomax
[1934 - 1935]
Marybeth Hamilton
[Reading]
The Folk Collector and the Black Singer
On the Road Together

The Funeral of Nikolai Vorontsov
Loren Graham
[Reading]
Death in the
Last Days of the USSR

Brooklyn College Brain
Allen Ginsberg
[Poem]
The New Teacher in New York City

Riding the D-Train
Enid Dame
[Poetry]
Poetry in the New York Subway

Issue #175
www.ralphmag.org/FA/indexFA.html
Early Mid-Summer 2008

Twelve Famous Readings
The Editors of RALPH
[Readings]
A Selection of Readings from the Early Days of the Magazine

Twentieth Century
United States Photographers:
A Student's Guide
Kristin G. Congdon
Karas Kelley Hallmark
(Greenwood Press)
A Textbook on Seventy-Five
Important American Photographers

Testy Mail
The Editors of RALPH
[Letters]
A Collection of Pained Communications
Addressed to the Magazine

Ants at Work[G]:
How an Insect Society Is Organized
Deborah Gordon
(The Free Press)
A Survey of Survival Habits
of Ants in the Desert

Pioneers of Balinese Painting:*
The Rudolf Bonnet Collection
Helena Spanjaard
(KIT Publishers)
Important Artists from mid-
Twentieth Century Java

Impressions of The East[B]:
Treasures from the C. V. Starr
East Asian Library
Deborah Rudolph
(Heyday Books)
Japanese, Chinese, and Korean
Art and Books in the Famous California Collection

Ten Books that
Screwed Up the World[B]:
And Five that Didn't Help
Benjamin Wiker
(Regnery)
Darwin, Freud, Kinsey, and
Hobbes Are Among the Villains Here

It Was Never about
A Hot Dog and a Coke![B]:
A Personal Account of the 1960 Sit-in Demonstrations in
Jacksonville, Florida and Ax Handle Saturday
Rodney L. hurst, Sr.
(WingSpan Press)
Memories of Early Civil-Rights Demonstrations
In North Florida

Living Abroad in China
Stuart and Barbara Strother
(Moon)
How to Get a Job
And Be Happy in
Communist China

Help Your Dog
Fight Cancer:
What Every Caretaker
Should Know about
Canine Cancer
Laurie Kaplan
(Kaplan)
Advice for Dog-Owners on Cancer

On Empire:*
America, War, and
Global Supremacy
Eric Hobsbawm
(Pantheon)
The Famed Marxist Historian
On America's Latest Venture in
The Middle East

Maxine Kumin
A Latin King
Dugustus Goop
X. J. Kennedy
Ordering Water Closets
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Night Haunts:*
A Journey through the London Night
Sukhdev Sandhu
(Artangel/Verso)
Reports on What Keeps London
Alive and Well During the Night

Pulling at Broken Strings
Laurie Lee
[Reading]
Mothers and Madness in Edwardian England

Wild Edges:
Photographic Ink Prints
Gregory Conniff
(University of Wisconsin)
Black-and-White Images of Nature

The Case of
The Disappearing Video
Dr. Phage
[Article]
How to Lose Orson Welles
In Your Home Video

Issue #176
www.ralphmag.org/FB/indexFB.html
Early Late Summer 2008

Varieties of Liberalism in Central America
Nation-States as Works in Progress
Forrest D. Colburn
Arturo Cruz S.
(University of Texas)
Economics and Politics in
Five Central American Countries

Away*
Amy Bloom
(HighBridge Audio)
The On-the-Road Adventures of Lillian Leyb
Refugee from 1920's Turov

500 Butterflies[B]
From Around the World
Ken Preston-Mafham
(Firefly)
512 Butterflies
Explained and Pictured

Gulf Music[B]
Poems
Robert Pinsky
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Poetry from the Contemporary
American Worry-Wart

The Nuremberg Legacy[B]
How the Nazi War Crimes Trials
Changed the Course of History
Norbert Ehrenfreund
(Palgrave)
A Participant in the 1946
Trials Views the Implications

Comfort
A Journey
Through Grief
Ann Hood
(Norton)
On the Death of the
Five-Year-Old Grace Hood

Illness and Devotion
Manoel de Barros
[Poetry]
New Poems from Brazil

The Last Barrier[G]
A Journey into the Essence
of Sufi Teaching
Reshad Feild
(Lindisfarne Books)
The Tortured Path of
Suffering for the Sufi Divine

Living Everyday Zen*
Charlotte Joko Beck
(Sounds True CDs)
Thoughts from the San Diego
Zen Master

Bonfire of the Vanities
Slaves
Finding Work in China
Distance, Age and Color
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Choosing to Love the World
Thomas Merton
(Sounds True)
150 Thoughts on Holiness and Surviving
(And Surviving Holiness)

The Death of Thomas Merton
John Howard Griffin
[Reading]
A Report on the Tragedy
from a Close Friend

More Harm Than Good
What Your Doctor May Not
Tell You about Common Treatments and Procedures
Alan Zelicoff, M.D.
Michael Bellomo
(Amacom)
Various Medical Procedures One
Can and Should Avoid

What I Was
Meg Rosoff
(Viking)
Adventures of the Rich and Poor
at an English Public School

Issue #177
www.ralphmag.org/FC/indexFC.html
Very Late Mid-Summer 2008

Penguins of the World
Wayne Lynch
(Firefly)
Penguins and the South Pole and
Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Art from Fort Marion
The Silberman Collection
Joyce M. Szabo
(University of Oklahoma)
American Indian Art (1874 - 1876)
from a Florida Prison

Birds*
The Art of Ornithology
Jonathan Elphick
(Rizzoli International)
More than 200 Representations
of Birds from 1492
to the Present

Buildings for Tomorrow
Architecture that Changed Our World
Paul Cattermole
(Overlook)
200 Examples of Modern Architecture

Landscapes of Slavery
The Plantation in American Art
Angela D. Mack
Stephen G. Hoffius, Editors
(University of South Carolina)
Seven Essays and a Hundred Drawings
and Illustrations of Plantation Life

E. O. Hoppé's Amerika*
Modernist Photographs
From the 1920's
Phillip Prodger, Editor
(Norton)
Pictures from America from
Eighty Years Ago

A Texas Journey
The Centennial Photographs of
Polly Smith
Evelyn Barker,
Editor
(Dallas Historical Society)
Happy Photographs from
1930s Depression Texas

Monstrosities[G]
Bodies and British Romanticism
Paul Youngquist
(Minnesota)
The "Proper Body" vs.
the "Monsters"

Baghdad Mon Amour[B]
Selected Writings Salah al Hamdani
Sonia Alland, Translator
(Curbstone)
Poems and Essays from the Front

Tree Barking[B]
A Memoir
Nesta Rovina
(Baytree)
Thirty Essays on Being a "Helper"

Indignation[B]
Philip Roth
(Houghton Mifflin)
A Chronicle of Newark (and Ohio)

Cataract Operations
That Go Bad
Ta Moko
Prince von Metternich
Subagh Singh Khalsa
Paid Reviews
Lucien Hervé
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Gravesend Trust
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Investing in Grave Sites for Fun and Profit

Ten of Our Most Popular Readings
The Editors of RALPH
[Readings]
A Selection of Belles Letres
from the Last 14 Years
Feldwebel Zorn's Motorcycle
Senaden Musabegovic
[Poem]
Modern Poetry from Bosnia

Secret Agent
Tonnus Oosterhof
[Poem]
Modern Poetry from Holland

Should You Wish to Stay
Sharif S. Elmusa
[Poem]
Modern Poetry from the Middle East

Issue #178
www.ralphmag.org/FD/indexFD.html
Very Early Late Summer 2008

The Model T
A Centennial History
Robert Casey
(Johns Hopkins)
The Origins of the "Flivver"

Japanese Women Poets:
An Anthology
Hiroaki Sato
(M. E. Sharpe)
100 Poets from Ancient and Modern Japan

American Creation*
Triumphs and Tragedies at
The Founding of the Republic
Joseph J. Ellis
(Random House Audio)
Six Key Events in the Founding
of the United States

Notes from Nethers:*
Growing Up in a Sixties Commune
Sandra Eugster
(Academy Chicago)
Ten Painful Years in a Hippy "Farm"

Wartime Writings
1943 - 1949
Marguerite Duras
(New Press)
Autobiographical Bits and
Unfinished Manuscripts of
the Author of The Lover

Warm Springs
Traces of a Childhood
In FDR's Polio Heaven
Susan Richards Shreve
(Mariner/Houghton Mifflin)
Going through Rehabilitation at
Roosevelt's Foundation in Georgia

The Diving Pool*
Yoko Ogawa
(Picador)
Three Spooky Stories from Japan

Three Musketeers
Marcelo Birmajer
(The Toby Press)
Memoirs of "Los Desaparecidos"
in Comic Novelistic Form

Yoga Mala:[G]
The Seminal Guide to
Ashtanga Yoga by
The Living Master
Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
(North Point Press)
Tales of Fasting
(and No-Nonsense)
from a Yogi

The Young Man
From Savoy[B]
Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz
(Host)
An Existentialist French Novel
from the Pre-War Period

The House of Widows[B]
Askold Melnyczuk
(Graywolf Press)
An American Innocent in Europe

The Mirror in the Well[B]
Micheline Aharonian Marcom
(Dalkey Archive)
Passion in the Carpenter's Shop

The Magical Campus[B]
University of North Carolina Writings ---
1917 - 1920
Thomas Wolfe
Matthew J. Bruccoli,
Aldo P. Magi,
Editors
(University of South Carolina)
All Too Early Works of the American Novelist

Cancer and Dogs
Writings by Letter-Carriers
W. H. Fowler
Photos of the Dalai Lama
My Bloody Life
Dada
The Banner Joint
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

A Coney Island
Of the Mind:
50th Anniversary Edition
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(New Directions)
Famous Early Poems by
A Famous Beat

The Military Band
Roger Vercel
[Reading]
Being in the Wrong War at
The Wrong Time

Curds & Whey
Sandra Eugster
[Reading]
Cooking for the Army
In a Commune

The Kayak Disaster
Sherry Simpson
[Reading]
Being in the Wrong Kayak
At the Wrong Season
In Alaska

Late-Winter Species
Era of the Homeless Indoors
Rob Cook
[Poetry]
American Existential Poetry

Issue #179
www.ralphmag.org/FE/indexFE.html
Late Early Fall 2008

Eighteen Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Our Editor's Choose the Best
Books of the First Half of 2008

Of Kids & Parents*
Emil Hakl
Marek Tomin, Translator
(Twisted Spoon Press)
Father and Son Walking and
Reminiscing on the Streets of Prague

The Carver and the Artist
Maori Art in
The Twentieth Century
Damian Skinner
(Auckland University Press)
A Hundred Plates, with Commentary,
of Contemporary Indigenous Art

The Soul Thief
Charles Baxter
(Pantheon)
A Novel about a Novel
About a Novel

One More Year
Sana Krasikov
(Spiegel & Grau)
Eight Short Stories about
The World between
Tbilisi and New York

Eat, Pray, Love
Elizabeth Gilbert
(Viking)
Eating, Praying and Loving
Here and Abroad
All Squashed into a Single Year

Talking out of School
Memoir of an Educated Woman
Kass Fleisher
(Dalkey Archive)
A Horror Story of Growing up
in Pennsylvania (and Trying to
Reform Educational Bureaucracy)

The Animal That
Therefore I Am
Jacques Derrida
(Fordham University Press)
The Philosopher Wondering about
Being Naked in Front of His Cat

Long Way Back to
The River Kwai [G]
Memories of World War II
Loet Velmans
(Arcade)
Five Years in Japanese
Concentration Camps

Ten Interviews
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Best of Interviews from
The Previous Fourteen Years of Our Magazine

Anorexia
Insensitive Reviews
RALPH to Receive $10,000,000
America's Child
Bare Hope Love
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Wordolatry
Jon Gallant
[Article]
How the Far Left
Gets Ensnared in
Its Own Words

Beautiful Summer in New Jersey
B. W. McClellan
[Article]
Three Months in a Torture
Camp for Children

Human Goulash
Emil Hakl
[Reading]
Cooking Up Supper
(With Real Meat)

To Meet Your Own Son
Emil Hakl
[Reading]
Twenty Years after His Being Born

Tuareg
Philip Rush
[Poem]
Going off to Join the Tuaregs
(And Their Nose-Flutes)

litany
Carolyn Creedon
[Poem]
Love in a Café

Issue #180
www.ralphmag.org/FF/indexFF.html
Mid-Fall 2008

Fifteen Classics
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Best of Classic Literature:
New Editions, and New Discs and Tapes

Lopsided*
How Having Breast Cancer
Can Be Really Distracting
Meredith Norton
(Viking)
Surviving the Double Whammy of
Breast Cancer (at Age 33)

Martinique ---
Snake Charmer Martinique ---
Charmeuse de Serpents
André Breton
(University of Texas Press)
The Famed Surrealist on
His Escape from Vichy France

A Woman's Work
With Gurdjieff, Ramana Maharshi,
Krishnamurti, Anandamaya Ma & Pak Subuh:
Mary Ellen Korman
(Arete)
The Spiritual Life Journey of Ethel Merston

The Love of
Impermanent Things:*
A Threshold Ecology
Mary Rose O'Reilley
(Milkweed)
Taking Care of Animals,
Husbands, and the World as a
Would-Be Saint

Intercourse*
Stories
Robert Olen Butler
(Chronicle Books)
The Nighttimes of the Greats of
History and Romance

My Ántonia
Willa Cather
(Blackstone Audio)
The Classic of Nebraska
Farm Life in the 1880s

Hardscrabble
Poems
Kevin McFadden
(University of Georgia Press)
Jesuitical Prose (and Poems)
On Roads, Travel, and U. S. Names

The Irregulars:
Roald Dahl and
The British Spy Ring
In Wartime Washington
Jennet Conant
(HighBridge Audio)
English Spying on the U. S.
During WWII

A Doll's House[G]
Henrik Ibsen
(Ivan R. Dee)
The Classic of a Woman
Trapped in Her Own Home
(By Herself)

A Reading List
Disability, Deafness and Depression
Philip Roth's Indignation
Down Syndrome & Charles De Gaulle
Robert Daley & The Enemy of God
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Just Another Hurricane
Memories from 1945
L. W. Milam
[Article]
Survival of Childhood Cyclones

Dear President Bush
William "Willie" Carstairs
[Letter]
A Plea to Help
The Poor of the Nation

The Uses of
Rubber Bands, or
"Var Är Min Paraply"
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Old Age and Learning Swedish

The Grandmothers in
My Hebrew Class
Gregory Levey
[Reading]
Several Very Old Ladies
Learning the Language of Love

After the Mastectomy
Meredith Norton
[Reading]
Being Cared for in the Hospital
(By a Husband and
Two Ex-Lovers

The Death of
A Mother
Mary Rose O'Reilley
[Reading]
The Art of Learning to
Forgive Mother

The Book of The Eton Cow
The Lonely Planet Visits the Dead
Fiona Farrell
[Poetry]
Two Poems Based on
Early Irish Manuscripts

E-Mail You
C. A. Amantea
[Poem]
Old Age and
New Technology

Issue #181
www.ralphmag.org/FG/indexFG.html
Early Late Fall 2008

Twelve on Wall Street
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Classic Articles, Reviews, and
Readings on Investing

Human Rights in African Prisons
Jeremy Sarkin, Editor
(Ohio University Press)
Ten Essays on the Past and Present State of
The African Penal System

Fruitless Fall
The Collapse of the Honey Bee and
The Coming Agricultural Crises
Rowan Jacobsen
(Bloomsbury)
What is CCD Syndrome?
Where It Came From
Where It Is Taking us

Unpacking the Boxes
A Memoir of a Life in Poetry
Donald Hall
(Houghton Mifflin)
Yet Another Autobiography
From the Famous Poet

The Eden Express[G]
A Memoir of Insanity
Mark Vonnegut
(Seven Stories)
A Memorable Autobiography of the Son
Of the Writer (While Hippie)

Mongrels, Bastards,
Orphans, and Vagabonds*
Mexican Immigration and
The Future of Race in America
Gregory Rodriguez
(Vintage)
Five Centuries of Racial Love
(And Fear) in and between the U. S. and Mexico

Dictation
Taxi Drivers
Katryn Simmonds
[Poems]
Two Poems from Wales

Spam and Literature
Virtual If Not Viral
Advertising on RALPH
The Enemy of God
Robert Daley
Rototilers
Reymundo Sanchez
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Louisiana Purchase
Joseph J. Ellis
[Reading]
How Thomas Jefferson Broke His Oath as President

Music in the
Middle Ages
A Reference Guide
Suzanne Lord
(Greenwood Press)
A Recounting of the Music in Europe
During the Dark Ages

Out on Our Assets
Dr. Phage
[Article]
How Your Will Be Allowed to Visit
Your Assets after the Meltdown

Twenty Fragments of
A Ravenous Youth
A Novel
Xiaolu Guo
(Nan Talese/
Doubleday)
Adventures of a Young Lady
Eating Her Way Through
Present-Day Beijing

Jean-Paul Sartre
Simone de Bouvier
Robert Butler
[Reading]
The Innermost Thoughts of
The Famous Couple
(While Mating)

I Want to Take You Higher
The Life and Times of
Sly and the Family Stone
Jeff Kaliss
(Backbeat Books)
The Adventures of Sylvester Stewart
Since the 1970s

Out Stealing Horses*
Pers Petterson
(Graywolf Press)
Growing Up (and Living in)
The Woods on the Swedish-Norwegian Border

Wallace Stegner's West
Page Stegner, Editor
(Heyday/Santa Clara University)
Fiction and Non-Fiction from the Pulitzer Prize Winner

Casualty Figures
How Five Men Survived
The First World War<br>Michele Barrett
(Verso)
Five Personal Accounts of
Those Who Lived Through
World War One

Issue #182
www.ralphmag.org/FH/indexFH.html
Early Winter 2008 - 2009

Fifteen Years, Fifteen Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Favored Reviews, Articles, Readings and
Poems from the First Fifteen
Years of RALPH

The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov
Peter Pringle
(Simon & Schuster)
One of the early greats of microbiology
felled because of political disfavor in
the Soviet Union

50 Photographers You Should Know*
Peter Stephan,
John Gabriel, Text Translator
(Prestel)

The History of Photography
in Simple Yet Honorable Scale
Serpent's Tale
Ariana Franklin
(Books on Tape)
A Tale of Medieval Blood-Lust
and Historical Mayhem

The Logic of Life
The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
Tim Harford
John Lee, Reader
(Books on Tape)
The Politics (and Power) of
Economic Determinism

Fifty-Eight Days in
the Cajundome Shelter
Ann B. Dobie
(Pelican)
The Survivors of Rita and Katrina
Under Guard

Talking Taíno
Caribbean Natural History
from a Native Perspective
William F. Keegan
Lisabeth A. Carlson
(University of Alabama)
The Original Language of the
Original Inhabitants of the American Caribbean

Steward of Song
Adam Stemple
(Tor)
A Gay Detective and a Killer
of Her Grandmother (In Scotland)

Sex Talks to Girls*
A Memoir
Maureen Seaton
(University of Wisconsin)
She Was a Drunk
(Married to a Rich Drunk)
(Then She Went Gay)

Scheisshaus Luck*
Surviving the Unspeakable
in Auschwitz and Dora
Pierre Berg
(Amacom)
Eighteen Years Old and
Eighteen Months in
Auschwitz

Cuba*
Art and History from
1868 to Today
Moraima Clavijo Colon (Curator)
Nathalie Bondit (Director)
(The Montreal Museum
of Fine Arts/
(Prestel)
One Hundred Fifty Years of Fine Art in Cuba

The Lost King of France[G]
Revolution, Revenge, and the Search for Louis XVII
Deborah Cadbury
(Fourth Estate)
A Strange Account of the
Beginnings of the
French Revolution

Managing Your Assets In Troubled Times
Rev. Larry Parks
Shipping Parts
Diamonds
Reymundo Sanchez
My Bloody Life
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twenty-Seven Great
Books on Disability
L. W. Milam
[List]
The Best of Handicapped Literature

The Eyes of The City:
Jane Jacobs
Tim Harford
[Reading]
What the Eyes of the City
Cannot Protect Us From

American Sugar
Subsidies
Tim Harford
[Reading]
Thirty-three Sugar Refiners
Running Our Trade and Subsidy Policies

Pangur Bán
My Cat
Anon
[Poem]
Eighth Century Poem of Cat-Love

Fly in a Hospital
The Bearded Lady and The Mannequin
Paul Graves
[Poems]
Two from Wales

Issue #183
www.ralphmag.org/FI/indexFI.html
Mid-Winter 2008 - 2009

Red Mutiny
Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin
Neal Bascomb
(Houghton Mifflin)
The Events on the Black Sea, 1905 --- in Detail

Prayers and Rituals
The Time of Illness and Dying
Pat Fosarelli
(Templeton Foundation Press)
A Manual for Healthcare Workers
for the Five Major Religions

Presidential Doodles
Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles &
Scrawls from the Oval Office
David Greenberg
(Basic)
Over Fifty Doodles Culled from
Official Presidential Papers

A Persistent Peace*
One Man's Struggle for
A Nonviolent World
John Dear
(Loyola Press)
The Works for Peace
by a Controversial Jesuit

The Romantic Dogs*
Poetry, 1980 - 1998
Roberto Bolaño
Laura Healy, Translator
(New Directions)
Poems by the Late
(and Now-Famous) Novelist

Passage Meditation
Bringing the Deep Wisdom of
The Heart into Daily Life
Eknath Easwaran
(Nilgiri Press)
Specific Meditations and
Chants for Inner Peace

Democracy's Prisoner
Eugene V. Debs, The Great War,
and the Right to Dissent
Ernest Freeberg
(Harvard)
The Prison Years of the Early
Twentieth Pacifist and Socialist

Understanding Gregory Bateson
Mind, Beauty, and the Sacred Earth
Noel G. Charlton
(SUNY)
A Reworking of the Primary Writings of the
Ecologist and Psychological Theorist

The Berlin Stories
Christopher Isherwood
(New Directions)
A Reprint of the Famous
"I Am a Camera" Stories from the 1930s

An American Summer[G]
Frank Deford
(Sourcebooks Landmark)
Novel of a Polio Survivor
and Her Pal

The Barnes Foundation
Violette de Mazia
Jill Fredston and Avalanches
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Welch
The Tao
The I Ching
Making $$$ in Iraq
Garnish: S. J. Perelman
Christian Dating
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Barry O'Bama and The Vulcans
Dr. Phage
[Article]
How Foreigners Voted
in the 2008 U. S. Election

A Bailout for RALPH
Lolita Lark
[Article]
A Scheme to Make This Magazine
More Like Citibank, Merrill Lynch,
and Lehman Brothers

Getting Breakfast in Auschwitz
Peter Berg
[Reading]
Survival in a Death Camp

Giving Birth to Sophie
Maureen Seaton
[Reading]
How the Baby Names Herself at Birth

Visit to the Convalescent
Roberto Bolaño
[Poem]
Survival on the Streets of Mexico City, 1973

Rain
Edward Thomas
[Poem]
The Last Edwardian in the Trenches, 1918

Issue #184
www.ralphmag.org/FJ/indexFJ.html
Early LateWinter 2008 - 2009

Seven Great Books of 2008
The Editors
[List]
Great Books from 2008 as Reviewed in RALPH

Seven Awful Books of 2008
The Editors
[List]
Ghastly Books from 2008 as Reviewed in RALPH

Mind Beyond Death
Dzogchen Ponlop
(Snow Lion)
The Bardos of Dying in Tibetan Buddhism

Home Girl
Building a Dream House
On a Lawless Block
Judith Matloff
(Random House)
How to Rebuild a Victorian Mansion in
Drug-Infested West Harlem

Freeman Walker*
A Novel
David Allan Cates
(Unbridled)
A Picaresque Trip through
Post-Bellum United States

Child 44
Tom Rob Smith
(Grand Central Publishing)
A Novel about Stalinist Russia and the MGB

Seduced by Modernity
The Photography of
Margaret Watkins
Mary O'Connor, Katherine
Tweedie, Editors
(McGill-Queens University Press)
The Life of the 1920s
Master of Modernism

A Natural History of Seeing
The Art and Science of Vision
Simon Ings
(Norton)
A Fact-Filled Excursion into
How We Look at Things

Seven Wheelchairs
A Life Beyond Polio
Gary Presley
(University of Iowa Press)
Forty Years in a Wheelchair

Of Prisons and Ideas[G]
Milovan Djilas
(Harcourt Brace)
An Anti-Stalinist Tells of Torture (and Freedom)

A Persistent Peace
John Dear
Touching the Rock
John M. Hull
José Saramago
The Double
Peace
$2,500,000
Condoms
Crew List
Cancer
$9,000,000
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Nabokov's Morning
Vladimir Nabokov
[Reading]
A Day in the Life
Of the Author of Lolita

Last Best Chance City
David Allan Cates
[Reading]
Life in a 1860s
Gold Mining Town

Death: The Stages of
the Bardo of Becoming
Dzogchen Ponlop
[Reading]
How to Know
When to Stop Dying

We Lived Together
Kenji Miyazawa
[Poem]
Traditional Japanese Poetry

March 16 [1996]
David Lehman
[Poem]
Contemporary American Poetry

Issue #185
www.ralphmag.org/FK/indexFK.html
Very Early Spring 2009

World Made by Hand
James Howard Kunstler
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
Novel about the Coming
Financial, Energy, and
Housing Apocalypse

Blood River
Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
Tim Butcher
(Grove Press)
A Modern-Day Pilgrimage
through Darkest Africa

Up Against the Wall
A Memoir of the '60s,
With Notes for Next Time
Osha Neumann
Seven Stories)
A Trip Down Memory Lane
with One of the Lower East Side
60s Trouble-Makers

Strand*
An Odyssey of
Pacific Ocean Debris
Bonnie Henderson
(Oregon State University Press)
The Leavings on a Mile of the Oregon Coastline

This Man's Army
A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets
John Allan Wyeth
(South Carolina)
Poetry from the First World War

Best New American Voices 2009
Fresh Fiction from
The Top Writing Programs
Mary Gaitskill, Editor
(Harcourt)
Fourteen Short Stories from Present-Day
American Writing Classes

Old English Poems
And Riddles
Chris McCully, Editor
(Fyfield/Carcanet)
A Selection of Poetry and
Puzzles from 7th to
11th Century England

Near Death in the Arctic
True Stories of
Disaster and Survival
Cecil Kuhne, Editor
(Vintage Books)
Twelve Stories on the
Worst Journeys in the World

The Possession
Annie Ernaux
(Seven Stories Press)
A Day-to-Day of a Lady
Gone Bonkers over an ex-Lover

Snowstruck[G]
In the Grip of
Avalanches
Jill Fredston
(Harcourt)
Two Experts on the
Terror of Alpine (and
Alaskan) Mountains

Buddha
Carl Jung
Freeman Walker
The Øresund Fixed Link
Slavery
Reymundo Sanchez
Eccentric Writers
"Me Is Friendly"
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Anatomy of a Review: Greed
Elfriede Jelinek
(Seven Stories Press)
A Break-Down of the
Process of Reading and
Reviewing a Wretched Novel

Bonehead English
How to Make Students Shine
(Despite Themselves)
L.W. Milam
[Article]
Making Writers Out of
Students Who Are Considered
Too Stupid to Write

John Huston Meets
Jean-Paul Sartre
Elif Batuman
[Reading]
When Two Existentialsts
Met (and Fought) over Freud

Godzilla in Mexico
Roberto Bolaño
[Poetry]
"The Bombs Were Falling
over Mexico City"

Hagar's Last Night
In Abraham's House
Itzik Manger (1901 - 1969)
[Poetry]
One of the Masters
of Yiddish Poetry (on Infidelity)

Issue #186
www.ralphmag.org/FL/indexFL.html
Early Mid-Spring 2009

Fifteen Hits
The Editors of Ralph
[List]
Our Most Popular Current
Reviews, Articles, Poems,
and Readings

Tradition
Quan Berry
[Poem]
Female Circumcision

Revolution in Mind
The Creation of Psychoanalysis
George Makari
(Harper Perennial)
The Birth and Growth of
Freudian Psychoanalysis

As a Friend*
A Novel
Forrest Gander
(New Directions)
Three Characters in the South Mid-West
In Love and Jealousy and Hate

Hijos del
Pueblo
Gender, Family, and Community
In Rural Mexico, 1730 - 1850
Deborah E. Kanter
(University of Texas Press)
The Use of the Depósito
As Punishment for Errant Women
In 19th Century Mexico

Soon the Rest Will Fall
A Novel
Peter Plate
(Seven Stories Press)
From the Jailhouse to
The Streets of
San Francisco

The Lady Missionary
Gail Dendy
[Poem]
The Arrival of Salvation in Africa

The Last Prince of
The Mexican Empire*
Catherine Mansell Mayo
(Unbridled Books)
The Last Days of Maximilian
and Carlota in Mexico

Chaucer and "The Parson's Tale"
World Made By Hand
James Howard Kunstler
The Kinsey Report
Tao Te Ching
Letters of Love
Artists from Krakow
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Lizards[G]
A Natural History of
Some Uncommon Creatures
Extraordinary Chameleons
Iguanas, Geckos, and More
David Badger, Text
John Netherton, Photos
(Voyager Press)
The Beasts of the Desert and Jungles Explained

Mating for Death
George Wald
[Article]
The Final Spasms of Death-Love

Oedipus Rex
Sophocles
Ian Johnson
Translator
(Richer Resources)
Dark Love in the Blight-
Infested City of Thebes

A People's History of
Poverty in America
Stephan Pimpare
(The New Press)
The Lives and Despairs of the
37,000,000 Poor in the United States

Issue #187
www.ralphmag.org/FM/indexFM.html
Late Spring 2009

Ten Great Poems
The Editors of Ralph
[List]
Ten of the Best Poems
From Our Last Fifteen Years

"Anniversary Serenade"
"Where the Sea Meets the Desert"
Clive James
[Poems]
Two Poems on Love

In the House of Beatrice Potter
Raphael Kadushin
[Reading]
Travels across the Dales
of England

Big Trips*
More Good Gay Travel Writing
Raphael Kadushin
(Terrace Books)
Sixteen Gay Stories
From the Ends of the Earth

Eskimo Architecture[G]
Dwelling and Structure in
The Early Historic Period
Molly Lee
Gregory A. Reinhardt
(University of Alaska Press)
From Igloos to
Fanciful Ice Structures

Labor Pains and
Birth Stories
Essays on Pregnancy, Childbirth,
And Becoming a Parent
Jessica Powers, Editor
(Catalyst Book Press)
Twenty-Nine Writers Tell
Their Stories of Labor and Giving Birth

Public Works Art Projects
The Roads of the Romans
The Virgin of Juquila
100 Copies
Pest Control
Sailing
The Fear of God
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Lonely Planet's
Best in Travel 2009
850 Trends, Destinations, Journeys &
Experiences for the Year Ahead
Geoff Howard, Editor
(Lonely Planet)
A Gorgeously Illustrated Book
On World Travel

Where Has She Gone?
Michael Greenberg
[Reading]
A Fifteen-Year-Old
In the Psych Ward

Hurry Down Sunshine*
Michael Greenberg
(Other Press)
An Epic Case of
"Fulminating Mania"

Organ-isms
Anecdotes from the World
Of the King of Instruments
Jenny Setchell, Editor
(Pipeline Press)
Seventy-Two Organists Tell of
Their Worst Performing Experiences

The Secret of
The Great Pyramid
How One Man's Obsession
Led to the Solution of
Ancient Egypt's Greatest Mystery
Bob Brier,
Jean-Pierre Houdin
(Collins)
A Theory of the Building of
The Great Pyramid

Resistance
A Novel
Owen Sheers
(Anchor Books)
What If the Germans
Conquered England in WWII

Shanghai Girls
A Novel
Lisa See
(Random House)
Two Chinese Girls Make It
To Los Angeles Before WWII

Issue #188
www.ralphmag.org/FN/indexFN.html
Very Early Summer 2009

Twelve Great Letters
The Editors of Ralph
[List]
Twelve of the Best Letters
Sent to Us Over the Last Year

Sex and Bacon
Why I Love Things
That Are Very Bad for Me
Sarah Katherine Lewis
(Seal)
Love and Poverty and
Great Food (and Sex)

"Pinched Toes"
"Soltera"
Deborah Fernández Badillo
Arte Público Press
Chicano / Latino Poetry

Dynamite
The Story of
Class Violence
In America
Louis Adamic
Jon Bekken, Editor
(AK Press)
A History of Labor Strife and
Violent Reaction

Eat, Memory:
Great Writers at the Table
A Collection of Essays from
The New York Times
Amanda Hesser, Editor
(Norton)
Twenty-Six More or Less
Famous Writers on Food

The Face of War
New Zealand's
Great War Photography
Sandy Callister
(Auckland University Press)
A Hundred Photographs
from The Great War
(and New Zealand)

The Making of
Mr. Gray's Anatomy
Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame
Ruth Richardson
(Oxford)
The History of the Making of
The Great Anatomy Book

Another Day of Life[G]
Ryszard Kapuscinski
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
The Civil War in Angola
Brought to Vivid --- and Vicious --- Life

Tattoos
Richie Havens
RALPH's Prescribers
Disability Poetry
Headhunter
Haughty Men
Sprongbox Baby
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Somewhere Towards the End
A Memoir
Diana Athill
(Norton)
Memories of Fifty Years
In the Publishing World

My Two Polish Grandfathers
And Other Essays
On the Imaginative Life
Witold Rybczynski
(Scribner)
The Architect's Polish
Ancestors Described

Race, Incarceration,
And American Values
Glenn C. Loury
(Boston Review)
Incarceration Seen as
Another Form of Racism

The Stranger
Albert Camus
[Article]
Thoughts about the Classic
Novel of Existentialism

The Mute
John Banville
[Reading]
The Secret of Twins

Issue #189
www.ralphmag.org/FO/indexFO.html
Mid-Summer 2009

Out of Your Mind[G]
Essential Listening from the
Alan Watts Audio Workshop
Alan Watts
(Sounds True)
A Selection of Tapes Broadcast by
The 1950s Expert on Eastern Mysticism

Backwoods
The Bees Are Inside
Rebecca Foust
[Poetry]
Two Poems of the Reality of Appalachian Folk Life

Cutting the Stone
Abraham Verghese
(Alfred A. Knopf)
On Being a Doctor in Ethiopia ---
and New York City

DADA
Alan Furst
Dynamite
Joseph McCarthy
Bipolar Forceps
Franka
Rubi Bra
Tattoo Machines
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Pen / O. Henry
Prize Stories 2009
Laura Furman, Editor
(Anchor Books)
Twenty Short Stories

Looking for the Evental
(In an Iraqi Field Hospital)
Robert Earle
[Reading]
French Philosophy in Baghdad, 2004

Retreat
A Story of 1918
Charles R. Benstead
(The University of South Carolina Press)
The Historical Novel of an
Anglican Padre on the Front Lines in 1918

Songs of Love, Moon & Wind
Poems from the Chinese
Kenneth Rexroth,
Translator
(New Directions)
Eighty Classic Chinese Poems

Legend of a Suicide
David Vann
(University of Massachusetts Press)
A Boy and His Father
Moored on an Alaskan Island

Sex Work and the City
The Social Geography of
Health and Safety in Tijuana, Mexico
Yasmina Katsulis
(University of Texas)
251 Case Studies of Sex
Workers on the Border

Conquering Gotham
A Gilded Age Epic:
The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels
Jill Jonnes
(Viking)
The Massive Work of
Connecting Manhattan to the South and West

Issue #190
www.ralphmag.org/FP/indexFP.html
Late Mid-Summer 2009

Top Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Most Popular Articles,
Reviews, and Readings on RALPH

"The Attic, the House"
William Matthews
[Poem]
Poem about Memories

Birdsong by the Seasons*
A Year of Listening to Birds
Donald Kroodsma
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
An Enthusiastic Compilation of
Forty-eight Birdsongs ---
Complete with CDs

Lanterns on the Prairie
The Blackfeet Photographs of Walter McClintock
Steven L. Grafe, Editor
(University of Oklahoma)
Ninety Original Plates of the
Blackfeet Indians from the 1900s

Jacob Bronowski and
"Is You Is Or
Is You Ain't My Baby?"
Jacob Bronowski
[Article]
The Eminent Scientist's Memories
of Visiting Nagasaki in Fall 1945

Travels with My Chicken[G]
A Man and His Companion
Take to the Road
Martin Gurdon
(Lyons Press)
Traveling About England with a Chicken
(and a Book About Traveling with Chickens)

Flying Across America
The Airline Passenger Experience
Daniel L. Ruse
(University of Oklahoma Press)
A Pictorial History of Air Travel
Across America

Guanajuato, Mexico
Everett Gee Jackson
[Reading]
Celebrations and Colors in an
Old Colonial City

Category 5
The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane
Thomas Neil Knowles
(University Press of Florida)
Memories of the Storm that
Took almost 500 Lives

Nights in the Pink Motel*
An American Strategist's
Pursuit of Peace in Iraq
Robert Earle
(Naval Institute Press)
Working for John Negroponte
in Iraq, in 2004

With an Iron Pen
Twenty Years of
Hebrew Protest Poetry
Tal Nitzan, Rachel Tzvia Back, Editors
(Excelsior / State University of New York)
Eighty-eight Protest Poems
from Jewish Writers

"Song of Praise"
Tamir Greenberg
[Poem]
Modern Hebrew Protest Poetry

Cosmetic Opportunities at RALPH
Carl Jung
Laying on Arms
The Love of Two Queens
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

"Psychic Healers"
Kathy Evans
[Poem]
Contemporary Poetry
About Psychotherapy

Samuel Johnson
And the Life of Reading
Robert DeMaria, Jr.
(Johns Hopkins)
The Library of the Great
English Writer and Essayist

My Secret Delight
Mary F. K. Fisher
[Reading]
Overlooking the Whores
Eating Slices of Carmelized Tangerines

Don't Leave Hungry
Fifty Years of
Southern Poetry Review
James Smith, Editor
(University of Arkansas Press)
Over Two Hundred Poems
from the 1950s to Now

Issue #191
www.ralphmag.org/FQ/indexFQ.html
Very Late Summer 2009

Problems with Cataract Operations
H. G. Wells
The Time Machine
Pets
Love Letters from Melissa
Letters We Never Finished Reading
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

All-American Poem*
Matthew Dickman
(American Poetry Review)
Over Thirty Narrative Poems
About American and America
(and Penguins)

Paris Spleen
Little Poems in Prose
Charles Baudelaire
(Wesleyan)
A Collection of Poems about Sordid,
Occasionally Beautiful, Paris

Circumcision[G]
A History of the World's
Most Controversial Surgery
David L. Gollaher
(Basic Books)
The Awful Truth
About the First Cut

Idle Thoughts on
Jerome K. Jerome
A 150th Anniversary Celebration
Jeremy Nichols, Editor
(The Jerome K. Jerome Society)
Essays, Biography and Readings from
the Author of Three Men in a Boat

Death by Leisure
A Cautionary Tale
Chris Ayres
(Grove Press)
The Worst of L.A. from the Pen
of a Fictional Newsman

Naked
Sybil Lockhart
[Reading]
The Unsettling Sight of a Mother with Alzheimer's

The Headpots of Northeast Arkansas and
Southern Pemiscot County, Missouri
James F. Cherry
(University of Arkansas)
An Intensive Study of Strange Artifacts
from Missouri and Arkansas

Beyond Forgetting
Poetry and Prose about
Alzheimer's Disease
Holly J. Hughes, Editor
(Kent State University Press)
A Hundred Writers on
Their Memories of
the Debilitating Disease

Harker's One Room Schoolhouses
Visions of an Iowa Icon
Michael P. Harker
Photographer
(University of Iowa Press)
Almost 100 Photographs of
Old Schools in Iowa

The Disabled:
Such Interesting People
Hugh Gregory Gallagher
[Article]
Sudden Changes in
the Disabled Experience

"Confessions of a
teenage drama queen"
D. A. Powell
[Poem]
Modern American Poetry

Living in the
Face of Death
The Tibetan Tradition
Glenn H. Mullen
(Snow Lion)
Readings on the Tibetan
Philosophy of Death

Vanishing*
Candida Lawrence
(Unbridled Books)
Seventeen Essays and Stories on
the Art of Disappearing

"The World Is Too Huge to Grasp"
Matthew Dickman
[Poem]
Contemporary American Poetry

A Conversation
With an Old Man
Lama Gungtang Konchok Dronme
[Reading]
The Tibetan View of
Getting Old

Issue #192
www.ralphmag.org/FR/indexFR.html
Early Fall 2009

Waco
Vladimir Nabokov
The American Eagle
Jerome K. Jerome
Three Men in a Boat
Love Letters from the Bird Girl
Letters We Never Finished Reading
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Airborne[G]
The New Dance Photography
of Lois Greenfield
Designed by William A. Ewing
(Chronicle Books)
In-the-Air Photographs of Dancers

The Evening Light
Anna Akhmatova
[Poem]
Early Twentieth Century Russian Love Poem

Letter to D
A Love Story
André Gorz
(Polity)
A Love Letter to Gorz's
Wife of Fifty-Eight Years

Bonk
The Curious Coupling of
Science and Sex
Mary Roach
(Norton)
An Extended Study of You-Know-What

Tics, Botox Shots, and
A Broken Heart
Carlos Amantea
[Article]
Some Thoughts about Doctors,
Botox, and Growing Ancient

Busted
Life Inside the
Great Mortgage Meltdown
Edmund L. Andrews
(Norton)
A Times Reporter Takes on
America's Financial Plight
(and His Own Mortgage)

Les Cloches
Guillaume Apollinaire
[Poem]
Love and the Village

Homer & Langley
A Novel
E. L. Doctorow
(Random House)
A New Take on the
Two Brothers Who Died in
Their Castle of Junk in New York City

Crow Planet*
Essential Wisdom from
The Urban Wilderness
Lyanda Lynn Haupt
(Little, Brown)
The Smart Black Birds
Who Will Probably Outlive Us

Deaf American Poetry
An Anthology
John Lee Clark, Editor
(Gallaudet University)
A Hundred Poems from Two Hundred Years<

Ghosts*
César Aira
(New Directions)
Strange Doings in an Argentine Condo (Under Construction)

Soul Survivor
The Reincarnation of a World
War II Fighter Pilot
Bruce and Andrea Leininger
(Grand Central)
A Two-Year-Old Wakes Up with
Nightmares from Sixty-Five Years Ago

Rimbaud
The Double Life of a Rebel
Edmund White
(Atlas & Co.)
Poetic Histrionics from the
Depths of 1860s Montmartre

The Suicide Index
Putting My Father's Death in Order
Joan Wickersham
(Mariner)
A Disquisition on the
Suffering of Survivors of Suicide

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
(And Existentialism)
Frank McCourt
[Reading]
An Immigrant Student at NYU