RALPH's
Reviews, Articles,
Poetry, and Readings:
Early Summer 2014ff


Those books marked with a [B]
can be found in "Brief Reviews."

Those marked with a [N]
can be found in "New Releases."

Those marked with a [G]
can be found under "Great Reviews of the Past."

*Indicates a book that the editors
found to be of especial merit.


Issue #250
www.ralphmag.org/HX/indexHX.html
Early Summer 2014
OUR 250TH ISSUE!

Angry Letters from the Past
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Reviews
The Meaning of Everything,
Learning to Fall
Whatever You Do, Don't Run,
The Making of a Tropical Disease,
etc
[The Editors]
[Reviews]
A Dozen Classics Chosen from the over 4,000
We Have Put On-line Since 1995

Twelve Articles
Grandma Moses with Pompadour and Peggers,
Doing the Tarantella At the Barnes Foundation,
The Partial Vapor Pressure of Khometz,
Hugh Gregory Gallagher,
etc.
[The Editors]
[Articles]
Articles on a Variety of Topics,
Drawn from the More Than 400
We've Put up at RALPH over the Years

Twelve Readings
S. J. Perelman, Gregory Bateson,
H. L. Mencken, Annie Dillard,
Elizabeth Gold, H. G. Wells,
Laurie Lee, Harvey Molotch,
Warren Hinckle, Ellsworth Huntington,
etc.
[The Editors]
[Readings]
A Dozen Readings ---
Mostly from Books Under Review

Twelve Poems
Not Exactly a Poem,
Brooklyn College Brain,
Coming of Age in Palo Alto,
Five Men,
etc.
[The Editors]
[Poems]bb A Dozen Poems from the More Than
500 We Have Put Online since 1995

Great Letters
Letters of Love, Hate, Vituperation, Praise, and Despair
[The Editors]
[Letters]
Letters Drawn from the Many Thousands
We Have Received Over the Years

Those Angry Days:
Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight
Over World War II, 1939-1941

Lynne Olson
(Random House)
The Controversies that Plagued the United States
During the Nerve-Wracking Two Years Leading up to Pearl Harbor

The Skin*
Curzio Malaparte
(New York Review Books)
A Most Revealing Picture of Americans in Europe
During the Closing Days of WWII

Behind the Beautiful Years
Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum
Katherina Boo
(Portobello)
A Jarring Picture of Life in One of India's
Most Desolate, Clotted, Disease-Infested Slums

Woody Guthrie's Wardy Forty
Greystone Park State Hospital Revisited
Phillip Buehler
(Woody Guthrie Publications)
An Intense Picture of Guthrie's Last Years
In Various Northeastern Hospitals

The Conditions of Hospitality
Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics on
The Threshold of the Possible

Thomas Claviez
(Fordham University Press)
A Close Examination of What Makes Us Hospitable ---
Or, as Easily, Unreceptive ---
to "Foreigners" or "Immigrants"

A Letter from
The Department of
Human Services
Mike Ervin
[Article]
That Sinking Feeling in Your Heart When
A Government Agency Writes to Tell You
They Really Care

Eating the Fish-Girl For Dinner
Curzio Malaparte
[Reading]
A Blow-by-Blow Account of Feasting
On the Fish-Girl at a
Fancy Dinner in Naples, 1945

Precision
Laurie Duesing
[Poem]
Watching Your Life Go Up in Smoke
When Your Love Has
A Motorcycle Accident


Issue #251
www.ralphmag.org/HY/indexHY.html
Mid-Summer 2014

From Mr. Warren Buffett
Science Fiction Writers
Letters We Never Finished Reading
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine

Our Most Beloved Pix
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Compilation of Those Pages that
Have Photographs or Drawings that
Our Readers Return to Again and Again

Urgent Architecture
240 Sustainable Housing Solutions
For a Changing World

Bridgette Meinhold
(W. W. Norton)
Unusual Structures --- Some Familiar,
Some Bizarre --- That Serve as
Emergency Shelters after a Disaster

Things I Don't Want to Know*
On Writing
Deborah Levy
(Bloomsbury)
A Short, Odd, Punchy
Reflection on Her Life
As it Grew from Her Novels

The Art of Dying
S. N. Goenka
(Vipassana Research)
A Memorial to the Master and
Reflections on the Vipassana View of
Death and Dying

100 Poems
Old and New
Rudyard Kipling
(Cambridge)
Some Great (and Controversial) Verse from
the Colonial Master

Trapped*
My Life with Cerebral Palsy
Fran Macilvey
(Skyhorse)
Reflections on Forty Years of Disability

Kumasi Realism
--- 1951 - 2007
An African Modernism
Atta Kwami
(Ghana Denmark Cultural Fund/ Hurst & Company)
Hundreds of Drawings, Paintings,
Road Signs and Popular Art
From Ghana

Outside
Stories
Barry Lopez
(Trinity University Press)
Six Stories from Native Speakers with
Introductions by Lopez

Shakespeare's Language [G]
Frank Kermode
(Farrar Straus)
Brilliant Exegesis from One of
The Great English Critics

Pop-Left Notes
A Thousand-and-One Nights of the Ukraine
Jon Gallant
[Article]
Some Revealing Insights into
The Present Crises

The Snowman of Johannesburg
Deborah Levy
[Reading]
Growing Up and Learning to Be a Writer
in South Africa, England and Elsewhere

After the Fall
Fran Macilvey
[Reading]
Part of the Day-to-Day with
Muscular Dystrophy

Iowa & Other Accidents
Kate Northrop
[Poem]
Driving, and the Snow, and
The Mississippi and the Accident

The Vision
Leslie Seamans
[Poem]
A Classic Tribute to Royalty, and Love, and
The Pain of Them Both


Issue #252
www.ralphmag.org/HZ/indexHZ.html
Late Summer 2014

The Committee Against Bonsai Abuse
St Denys' Church Colmworth
Letters We Never Finished Reading
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine

Top Pop Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Compilation of Fifteen Reviews, Readings,
Poems, or Articles that Our Readers
Find Most Gratifying

Slowspoke*
A Unicyclist's Guide to America
Mark Schimmoeller
(Chelsea Green)
One man on a one-man unicycle
travels from North Carolina to
New Mexcico

The Remedy
Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle,
And the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis

Thomas Goetz
(Gotham)
A Study of a 19th Century Genius ---
And his Failed Attempt to Cure TB

Wake Up and Laugh
Dharma Teachings of Zen Master Daehaeng
Daehaeng Kun Sunim
(Wisdom)
Five Talks Given by a Korean Zen Master

Best New Poets --- 2013
50 Poems from Emerging Writers
Brenda Shaughnessy, Editor
(Rector and Board of Visitors of
The University of Virginia)
Fifty Poems Drawn from Over 4,000 Submissions

Faces in the Crowd*
Sidewalks
Valeria Luiselli
(Coffee House Press)
The Story of a Writer Who Discovers
Gilberto Owen --- and, Possibly, Herself

Stars Go Blue
Laura Pritchett
(Counterpoint)
A Novel about the Effects Alzeihmer's on a Family

Tibetan Peach Pie
A True Account of an Imaginative Life
Tom Robbins
(Ecco)
Tom Robbins' Memoir which ---
He Tells Us ---
Is Not a Memoir

The Last Sideshow [G]
Hanspeter Schneider
(Dazed) A
Visit to Gibsonton, Florida ---
where old carney folk go to retire

The Immense Machinic Phylum
Maurizio Lazzarato
[Article]
Machines We Are Allowed to Use
That Use Us

The Mordida [G]
C. A. Amantea
[Article]
A Device to Rid Us of Lawyers, Courts, Judges

The First Day of
My Unicycle Trip Across America
Mark Schimmoeler
[Reading]
How to Start a
Cross-Country Journey
on a Unicycle

Kimchi
Tom Robbins
[Reading]
The National Condiment of Korea

Banning the Orgasm [G]
Jonathan Margolis
[Reading]
The Power of Sexual Taboos

Denigration [G]
Harryette Mullen
[Poem]
Poem on Unseen Racism

What Would Freud Say?
Bob Hicok
[Poem]
Poem on Self-Inflicted Injuries


Issue #253
www.ralphmag.org/IA/indexIA.html
Early Fall 2014

Two Hotties
Bach Blows His Wig
Where Will We Live?
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine

A Dozen Hoots
The Editors
[List]
Twelve Articles, Readings, or Reviews that
We Find to Be Rib-Tickling Funny

Mommy Man*
How I Went from
Mild-Mannered Geek
To Gay Superdad
Jerry Mahoney
(Taylor Trade)
The Complete Adventures of Seeking, Finding, and
Impregnating a Surrogate Mom ---
And Getting (in This Case) Twins

Time and Again
The Classic Illustrated Novel
Jack Finney
(Touchstone)
The Classic Story of
b Returning to New York City
As it Existed 21 January 1882

The Secret Keeper*
Kate Morton
(Brilliance Audio)
A Saga of a Sixty-Year-Old
Mystery of Love, Family, and
A Fatal Stabbing

Debt Resisters'
Operations Manual
Malav Kanuga, Series Editor
(PM Press)
How to Deal Sensibly with
the Plight of Owing Too Much
and Having Too Little

The Free
Willy Vlautin
(Harper Perennial)
The Plight of a Dying Veteran
And His Assorted Caregivers

A Russian American Photographer
In Tlingit Country
Vincent Soboleff in Alaska
Sergei Kan
(University of Oklahoma Press)
bA Photographer on Angoon Island,
Alaska (1890 - 1920)

San Francisco Lithographer
African American Artist
Grafton Taylor Brown

Robert J. Chandler
(University of Oklahoma Press)
An Expert African-American Lithographer in
Northern California, 1860 - 1880

A World of Watchers[G]
An Informal History of
The American Passion for Birds

Joseph Kastner
(Sierra Club)
150 Years of Bird-
Watching in America

Family Reunion:[G]
Poems about Parenting Grown Children
Sondra Zeidenstein, Editor
(Chicory Blue)
You Think Parenting Stops When
They Go Out the Door. Think Again

Middle Finger on a Stick
Mike Ervin
[Article]
How Does One Who Has Little
Use of Arm, Hand (or Finger)
Offer the Universal Sign of Disapproval?

Pornographia[G]
A Matriarchal Society
A A Gill
[Article]
A Close Study of the
Making of a Pornographic Movie

Living on the Margins of
The Debt System
Food
P. M. Press
[Reading]
The Art of Dumpster Diving

Buying a Baby Stroller
Jerry Mahoney
[Reading]
How Do Two Gay Guys
Casually Purchase Something
Special for Their Upcoming Toddler

Theodore Roosevelt:
An Intimate Biography
William Roscoe Thayer
(Constable & Co.)
A Superb Example of
Virginia Woolf's Talent
For Book Reviews

Ballad of The Bread Man
Charles Causley
[Poem]
A Treatise on The Second Coming
(In the English Outback)

Tootie-Fruit ME &
Ass-Grasp LA
L. L. Lark
[Poem]
"They say we were part of the Breadfruit Conspiracy"


Issue #254
www.ralphmag.org/IB/indexIB.html
Mid-Fall 2014

Gutzon Borglum
Six Wars at a Time
Nekkid Coworkers
PLEASE LET IT BEEN VERY URGENT PLEASE
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
b Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Ghastly Poetry
The Editors
[List]
Thirteen Reviews from the Past
About Ghastly Books of Poetry

Emaho Tibet!
Blessings from
The Land of Snows

Simhananda
(Orange Palm and Magnificent Magus Publications)
An Odd If Not Endearing
Photographical Album of
A Tibetan Monastery

Doctored
The Disillusionment of
An American Physician

Sandeep Jauhar
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A Doctor Reveals the What and the Why
Of American Medicine Gone Wrong

Beloved Strangers
A Memoir
Maria Chaudhuri
(Bloomsbury)
She Goes from Bangladesh to an America
College --- and Tries to Figure Out
Why Her Life Is So Miserable

A Fighting Chance*
Elizabeth Warren
(Metropolitan)
A Strong Attack on Those Who
Control American Finances and Politics
By a Newly Elected Senator

Augustus
The First Roman Emperor
Adrian Goldsworthy
(Yale University Press)
Augustus, Rendered Anonymous Because
He Was Just Too Benign

The Fixer*
The Notorious Life Of
A Front-Page Bail Bondsman

Ira Judelson
(Touchstone)
You May Not Want to Known Any of This ---
Unless You Need to Get Out of Jail Free
Or Maybe Not-So-Free

Zen Cancer Wisdom*
Tips for Making Each Day Better
Daju Suzanne Friedman
(Wisdom)
Advice from One Who Has Been There
--- and Alas, Did Not Survive

Shrinkage
Manhood, Marriage, and The Tumor
that Tried to Kill Me

Bryan Bishop
(Thomas Dunne Books)
A Somewhat JuvenileTale of Cancer and Survival

Combat Trauma[G]
A Personal Look at Long-Term Consequences
James D. Johnson
(Rowman & Littlefield)
Thirteen Combatants Tell What It Is Like
To Live with the Actuality of
Being in the Fields of War

Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi
Read by Livette Lecat
(Recorded Books Unabridged)
A Long Rambling Account of Reading Books that Are Banned

Terence McKenna on Death and Dying
Erik Davis
[Interview]
How It Feels When You
Know that Your Are Dying

Letter from Skane
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Sweden As Seen Through the
Eyes of An Intrepid Comic-Book Reader

A Fire-Spouting Toaster
Elizabeth Warren
[Reading]
How a Toaster Tried to Set Warren's
Kitchen on Fire, and How
It Inspired Her to Set Up the CFPB

The Origins of The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Elizabeth Warren
[Reading] Setting Up an Oversight Committee to
Protect Us From Overweening Banks and Corporations

The Inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Hugh Gallagher
[Reading]
The Inauguration of FDR
In the Midst of the Depression

Bluebird
Charles Bukowski
[Poetry]
"there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him"

Self-Portrait
So Chongju
Translated by Peter H. Lee
[Poetry]
"I was a mother's son with dirty fingernails
Under a lamp by the mud wall
With bushy hair and staring eyes."


Issue #255
www.ralphmag.org/IC/indexIC.html
Late Fall 2014

Consumers Report and the Upcoming
Battle with the Geezers
I want to have a common relationship with you . . .
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Hits
The Editors
[List]
The Reviews, Readings, Poems
And Articles from the Last 20 Years
That Commanded the Most Hits
Over the Last Month

Debt to the
Bone-Eating Snotflower*
Sarah Lindsay
(Copper Canyon Press)
Sixty Great (but Gooshy) Poems Dedicated to
Whales, Squid, and Cephalopods

The Unknown Bridesmaid
Margaret Forster
(Europa Editions)
A Psychotherapist Confronts Her Own Demons
As She Confronts the
Demons of Others

Shortcut
How Analogies Reveal Connections,
Spark Innovation, and
Sell Our Greatest Ideas

John Pollack
(Gotham Books)
The Case for Analogies --- the
Joining of Dissimilar Ideas As a Creative Force --- that
Can Easily Turn to Disaster

Newcomb Pottery:
A Visual Treasury
John Canaday
Suzanne Ormond
and Mary E. Irvine
(Pelican)
Revelations of New Orleans Art Pottery as
Developed by the Ladies' Decorative Art League
Starting in 1885

Signs and Machines*
Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity
Maurizio Lazzarato
(Semiotext(e))
An Astonishing Investigation of Machines:
How They Own Us, Drive Us (Sometimes Mad) ---
All While We Pretend to Own and Drive Them

The Vegetarian Cook's Bible
Pat Crocker
(Robert Rose)
The Controversial Cookbook that May
(Or May Not) Be Pure Vegan

Metaphysical Odyssey into
The Mexican Revolution*
Francisco I. Madero and His
Secret Book, Spiritist Manual
Catherine Mansell Mayo
(Dancing Chiva Literary Arts)
The Father of the Mexican Revolution
Revealed to Be a Committed Spiritist

America's U-Boats Terror
Trophies of World War I
Chris Dubbs
(University of Nebraska)
How Six World War I Submarines
Made Their Way to America for
A Rather Dubious Mission

Sometimes a Great Notion[G]
Ken Kesey
Tom Stechschulte
Narrator
(Recorded Books)
Kesey's Great Novel about
The Great Stamper Family of
The Great Northwest

Communion[G]
Whitley Strieber
b(Morrow)
The Original (and Very Successful)
I-Was-Kidnapped-and-Lovingly-
Raped-By-Aliens Book

My Life is Ruined
Mike Ervin
[Article]
A Malfunctioning Voice-Recognition Machine
Changes a Disabled Man's Life Forever

The Death of Poetry
Robert Littell
[Reading]
Osip Mandelstam, a Man Who Died for a Single Poem

Mexican Buses[G]
Sybille Bedford
[Reading]
The Adventure of the Century: Bus Journeys
Across Mexico Seven Decades Ago

Cephalopod and Star and Sea
Sarah Lindsay
[Poem]
One Hand a Starfish, The Other an Octopus

Medicine Woman[G]
Cheryl Savageau
[Poem]
"Now white women come into my shop
and ask me to bless their houses
(what's wrong with them, I want to ask)"


Issue #256
www.ralphmag.org/ID/indexID.html
Early Winter 2014 - 2015
Our Twentieth Year!

Chernobyl
Grafton Tyler Brown
Metaphysical Odyssey into
The Mexican Revolution
Francisco I. Madero and his Secret Book
Spiritist Manual
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine

Internal Medicine
A Doctor's Stories
Terrence Holt
(Liveright Publishing Corporation)
A Doctor Tells of His Initiation
into the New World of Medicine

Singing Bronze:
A History of Carillon Music
Luc Rombouts
(Lipsius Leuven)
The Great Steeple Bells
From the 13th Century until Now

Vowels to the Ukraine
Anon
[Reading]
The Need to Export Large Numbers of Vowels to The Ukraine
(Because They Don's Have Enough)

Resident On Call[B]
A Doctor's Reflection on
His First Years at Mass General

Scott A. Rivkees, M.D.
(Lyons Press)
Another 'So Now You're a Doctor' Book

The Minotaur's Head[B]
An Inspector Mock Investigation
Marek Krajewski
(Melville International)
Polish Murders, with Herrings,
Horseradish and Pickled Cucumbers for Breakfast

Sex After . . . [B]
Women Share How Intimacy Changes As Life Changes
Iris Krasnow
(Gotham Books)
Relationships and Self-Realization and Sex and Sex

War of Attrition[B]
William Philpott
(Overlook)
The Early Days of WWII

To Know the Revolution
Tony Judt
[Reading]
Memories of Being on the
Streets of Paris Back in 1968

Advice
Malgorzata Skalbania
[Poem]
avoid scientific phrases

A Father Rebukes His Son
Amos Oz
[Poem]
"Listen carefully. This is your father speaking.
A simple man, a rather grey man, and so on and so forth, but still your father."


Issue #257
www.ralphmag.org/IE/indexIE.html
Early Winter 2014 - 2015
Our Twentieth Year!

PHOTOGRAPHY
The Library of Congress, Canadian Railroads, Mississippi Juke Joints, T
he Smithsonian Institute, Bloomsbury,
Camping, Lizards and more.

SEX
Zen Sex, Paul Krassner, Pornography and the Politics
Of Fantasy in America, Sex, Monsters,
and The Middle Ages, The Victorian Nude,
Going Down, the FCC

ART BOOKS
Leopoldo Méndez, Lois Greenfield, British Wood-Engraved
Book Illustrations 1904 - 1940,
2,500 Works from Cave to Contemporary, The Crucifixion in American Art,
The Texas Post Office Murals, James Ensor

TERRIFIC BOOKS
Where Stuff Comes From, Breath Sweeps Mind, The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers,
EMPIRE, My Late-Life Adventures In Sex and Romance, Tattoos, the Disappearing West,
Very Bad Men, and My Deep Love for them All

ANIMALS
James Thurber, Rats, Lice, and History, Bonobo Handshake, Millions of
Monarchs Bunches of Beetles, Nabokov's Butterflies,
A Fly for the Prosecution

RELIGION
The Lamed-Vovnik, Essential Listening from the Alan Watts Audio Workshop,
Padre Serra Sells Baja, We're All Doing Time,
Padre Serra Sells Baja

POETRY
Guillaume Apollinaire, Allen Ginsberg, The Angel, Paul Celan,
How Poor a Thing Is Man, English Con Salsa, Amos Oz,
Why I Am A Whore

PSYCHOLOGY
Sigmund Freud, William Halstead, And the Miracle Drug Cocaine,
Manet & Monet & Marx & Freud, Couples Therapy For the Disabled,
Samovars and Bedlam, Psychic Healers, The Psychotherapist Is Always Late

THE CLASSICS
Frank Kermode, To Die and Go We Know Not Where,
Robert Browning, Jean Racine, Vanity Fair, A Doll's House, Hard Times

INTERVIEWS
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, L. L. Doctorow,
Paul McCarthy, Terence McKenna on Death and Dying,
S. J. Perelman, The Automobile Is a Wheelchair


Issue #257
www.ralphmag.org/IE/indexIE.html
Mid-Winter 2014 - 2015

My Best Friend's Ghost
Singing Bronze:
A History of Carillon Music
A Letter from the Dominican Republic
Flirty Chat Rooms
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twenty Years of Great Poetry Books
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Great Books of Verse
That Have Come to Us since 1994

Fu-Go*
The Curious History of
Japan's Balloon Bomb
Attack on America
Ross Coen
(University of Nebraska Press)
bThe Launching of Thousands of
Gas-Fire Balloons from
Japan to the United States, 1944-1945

The Faulkes Chronicle
David Huddle
(Tupelo Press)
Mother is Dying of Cancer
But Does It Beautifully (Literally)
With the Coöperation of Her Thirty-One Children (!)

Hiroshima, Nagasaki
The Real Story of the
Atomic Bombings and
Their Aftermath

Paul Ham
(Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Press)
An Excellent Account of the Politics Behind
(On Both Sides) that Led to
The Destruction of Japanese Two Cities

The Burning of the World
A Memoir of 1914
Béla Zombory-Moldován
Peter Zombory-Moldován, Translator
(New York Review Classics)
An Exact Description of the Early Days of WWI
And its Effect on All Concerned

The Most Dangerous Book*
The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses
Kevin Birmingham
(The Penguin Press)
The War against Ulysses and
the History of "Dirty" Words in Literature

Copia*
Poems
Erika Meitner
(BOA Editions Ltd)
Fine and Unusual Poems of Love (and Reality)
In Modern-Day USA

Euphoria
A Novel
Lily King
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
Three Anthropologists in the South Pacific
Between the Wars (Between Themselves)

The Human Age
The World Shaped by Us
bbDiane Ackerman
(W. W. Norton)
The Odd Things We Are Doing to
Convert the World to One of (Only)
Human Beings

How to Be an Intellectual
Essays on Criticism, Culture, & the University
Jeffrey J. Williams
(Fordham)
A Self-Defined "Intellectual" on Such Grim Tales as
How We've Turned Our Students into a Hopeless Debtor Class

Advanced Rut Hunting[G]
Strategies for Taking
Whitetails During
Prime Time

Gerald Bethge, Editor
(Lyons Press)
Methods for Bagging a Lusty Stag and
Turning Him into Fresh Meat

The Hamburger Book
Honey and Larry Ziman
(St. Martins Press)
More Silliness than You Can Imagine
About the Common Hamburger

From the Duchy of Moscow to Vladimir Zhirinovsky:
Russian History and Its Consequences
Jon Gallant
[Article]
Some Astonishing Facts about Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Who Wants Russia to Take Back Alaska

The Discovery of Other Minds
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
[Reading]
David TuckerTranslates an Entrancing Passage
About Waiting in the Desert ---
To Be Saved; or Perhaps Killed

Dual Micturation in Dublin[G]
James Joyce
[Reading]
Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus
In a Late Night Pissing Contest

Wal-Mart Supercenter and
Porto, Portare, Portavi, Portatus
Erika Meitner
[Poetry]
Two about Shopping Centers, Miscreants, and
The Job of All of Us to Consume


Issue #258
www.ralphmag.org/IF/indexIF.html
Late-Winter 2015

Global Warming and China and India
Evil Aliens
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine

Fifteen Stupendous Books from 2014
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Great Books of 2014

World War I in 100 Objects
Peter Doyle
(Penguin)
One Hundred Rather Ghastly Objects
That Supposedly Helped the Good Guys
Win the War

'Til the Well Runs Dry*
Lauren Francis-Sharma
(Henry Holt)
A Fascinating Round of Love,
Incest, Family Wars, and
Despair in Trinidad

The Legs of Izolda Morgan
Selected Writings
Bruno Jasienski
(Twisted Spoon Press)
They Called Themselves the "Futurists."
They Were the Dadaists of Interwar Poland and
They (as Usual) Issued the Usual Manifestos

Island of a Thousand Mirrors
Nayomi Munaweera
(St. Martin's Press)
The Civil War in Sri Lanka --- and, before,
The Romance of Growing Up in an Island Paradise

Ecodeviance
(Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness
CAConrad
(Wave Books)
The Author Is Fond of Pulling Strings ---
Then Sitting Down to Write Poems About It

This Life*
Karel Schoeman
(Archipelago)
A Subtle and Lovely Book about the Very Shy ---
and How They Survived So Long Ago (in the Boer Country)

The Unloved
Deborah Levy
(Bloomsbury)
They're in a Rented Chateau in Normandy --- and in Levy Country.

Kinsey[G]*
Sex the Measure Of All Things
Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy
(Indiana University Press)
The Fascinating History of Kinsey and
All Those Sex Study Books

Great Folios of the Past
Late Summer 2011
[List]
The Editors
One of the Most Popular Printed Edition of RALPH

The Veliki Knyaz
An Episode in Russian History
Jon Gallant
[Article]
A Historical Example of
Russian Demand for Conformity.

Jean Genet and the Black Panthers
Edmund White
[Reading]
Jean Genet Being Jean Genet

How Writers Lose Their Style
David Lodge
[Reading]
When Computers Come in to Deflate the Novelist

The Zen Monks and The Governor
Zen Master Seung Sahn
[Reading]
The Monk in the Kitchen Teaches
The Governor How to Fly

Maps and
The Bibles of the Poor
Marshall McLuhan
[Reading]
The Market in Black Market Maps

Ice Age
Sigitas Parulskis
[Poem]
Turning Splinters into Messages from Heaven

The Lice Seekers
Arthur Rimbaud
[Poem]
The Ladies Clean the Boy's Head


Issue #259
www.ralphmag.org/IG/indexIG.html
Early Spring 2015

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes
Maybe You Are Too Bussy
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Some Odd (But Very Important) Books
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Best Revelatory Books
From the Last Twenty Years

Face of Our Time*
August Sander
(André Deutsch)
The Noted Early 20th
Century Photographer Remembered

An Innocent Abroad
Life-Changing Trips from
35 Great Writers

Don George, Editor
(Lonely Planet)
Essays from All Over
With Life-Changing Adventures

Preparing the Ghost*
An Essay Concerning
The Giant Squid and
Its First Photographer

Matthew Gavin Frank
(Liveright Publishing)
The History and the Giant
Mysteries of the Giant Squid Explained

Fractured Times
Culture and Society in
The Twentieth Century

Eric Hobsbawm
(New Press)
The Famed (and Eloquent) Historian
Explains What Is Happening to Us
And Offers Insight into Cowboys, too

Miruna*
Bogdan Suceavï
(Twisted Spoon Press)
Miraculous Goings-On
In the Mountains of Romania

Up in Here
Jailing Kids on
Chicago's Other Side

Mark Dostert
(University of Iowa)
Working as a Guard in Chicago's
Biggest Juvenile Facility

A Useless Man*
Sait Faik Abasiyanik
(Archipelago Books)
Thirty-Seven Stories by the Folkish Writer
Known to All in Turkey as Sait Faik

How to Be Both
Ali Smith
(Pantheon)
A Mysterious Italian Artist
From the 15th Century
And a Brilliant Girl from the Twentieth

The Fays
Bogdan Suceavă
[Reading]
The Carpathian Version of The Furies

The Twenty-Five
Truths of Life [G]
Barry Corbet --- 1935 - 2004
[Article]
An Eulogy for the Famous Writer,
Photographer and Editor

Death of
The Dulger
Sait Faik Abasiyanik
[Reading]
The Noisiest, Ugliest Fish in All Creation

The Hot Bath
Helping to Cure Rheumatism, Hypertension, and Ascites
Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein
[Reading]
One of the Oldest Cure-Alls Explained

Lilith
Enid Jacob James
[Poem]
Eve's Side of the Story Explained

James Alley Blues[G]
Richard 'Rabbit' Brown
[Poem]
How to Love One Too Much

[G] Great Reviews (or Articles) from the Past
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #260
www.ralphmag.org/IH/indexIH.html
mid-Spring 2015

Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum
Our Cheatin' Wives
The Grand Prince of Moscow
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine:
Letters to RALPH

Why O Why?
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Nice Collection from
Twenty Years of This Magazine's
"Paradox of the Month"

The Possibilities
Kaui Hart Hemmings
(Simon & Schuster)
A Novel about a Boy's Death,
and the Young Girl Who Appears at the Back Door,
Saying She is the To-Be Mother of the Son's New Child

K is for Killer
Sue Grafton
(St. Martin's Griffin)
Number 11 in the Apparently
Endless Series of Detective Stories
by Grafton

Zen Encounters with Loneliness
Terrence Keenan
(Wisdom)
An Alcoholic Zen Master
Relates the Details of
His Addiction

The Empire of the Dead
Tracy Daugherty
(Johns Hopkins University)
Seven Short Stories
Five about a
Lonely Man in New York City

The Footloose American Trail Across South America
Following the Hunter S. Thompson
Brian Kevin
(Broadway Books)
Following Thompson's Trail in
South America Fifty Years Ago

10:04
A Novel
Ben Lerner
(Faber & Faber)
An Up-and-Coming
Novelist in New York
with Hurricane, Pregnancies, and Thoughts of
Writers Writing about Writing

Hell and Good Company
The Spanish Civil War
And the World It Made
Richard Rhodes
(Simon & Schuster)
Heroism, Sacrifice, and
the Outsiders in the Midst
of that Sad War

Dataclysm
Who We Are When We Think
bNo One's Looking

Christian Rudder
(Crown)
Some Scary Facts about
What You Give Up When
You Join Others Online

Seduced by Modernity:[G]
The Photography of Margaret Watkins
Mary O'Connor, Katherine Tweedie, Editors
(McGill-Queens University Press)
One of the Great "Modernist" Photographers
from the American Jazz Age

Georgia O'Keeffe and
New Mexico[G]
A Sense of Place
Barbara Buhler Lynes
Leslie Poling-Kempes
Frederick W. Turner
(Princeton University Press)
The Testy O'Keeffe Being Testy
to the Snobs of Santa Fe

Kosher Goyim
Dr. Phage
b Article
A Plan to Convert the Goyim
by Means of the Best Food
on the Planet

When Rats Find Cats Alluring
Toxoplasma gondii
Diane Ackerman
[Reading]
A New and Devilish Plague Particular
to Cats and Kangaroos

Eskimos and
The Long Winter Darkness[G]
Jane Brox
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
How Eskimos Survived without
Lights and Electricity

Baudelaire 1939
Baudelaire Hamburger
Marcia
Richard Brautigan
Poems
The Beat Master in
Three of His Best

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #261
www.ralphmag.org/II/indexII.html
Late Spring 2015

Kosher Goyim
Thieves in Wheelchairs
Offer from the Libyan Government
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen All-Time Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Reviews, Articles, Poems and Readings
That Get the Most Repeat Business
From Our Readers

On Immunity*
An Inoculation
Eula Biss
(Graywolf Press)
A Writer's Personal Trip to Discover if
It Is Safe for Her to Inoculate Her Son

Philip Larkin
Life, Art and Love
James Booth
(Bloomsbury)
One of those Excruciating Long Overly Dull
Microscopic Examinations of an Author's Life
(As If the Secret of His Art Were Hidden There

Our Lady of the Nile*
Scholastique Mukasonga
(Archipelago)
An Utterly Charming Peek at a Girl's School
In Present-Day Rwanda with (Surprise!)
Little Blood, Lots of Love

Dead Water
Ann Cleeves
(Minotaur)
An Endlessly Drawn Out Murder Mystery
In, of All Places, the Shetland Islands

The Birds of Pandemonium
Life Among the Exotic and the Endangered
Michele Raffin
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
Raffin Cannoit and Will Not Leave a
Sick or Nutty Bird
From Moving into Her Place There in
the Santa Cruz Mountains

Doing It at the Dixie Dew
Ruth Moose
(Minotaur/Thomas Dunne)
Another Bed & Breakfast Murder ---
This Time in the Deep South

The Queen's Caprice
Stories
Jean Echenoz
(New Press)
Seven of Echenoz'
Fiction/Non-Fiction Explorations
Of History, Engineering, and the Outskirts of Paris

The Bird Skinner
A Novel
Alice Greenway
(Grove Press)
A Surly Old Boozer Meets an Old Friends
Lovely and Out-of-this-World Daughter

American Creation[G]
Triumphs and Tragedies at
The Founding of the Republic

Joseph J. Ellis
(Random House Audio)
A Can't-Stop-Listening Reading
Of the Early Days of the Republic

Lanterns on The Prairie[G]
The Blackfeet Photographs
Of Walter McClintock

Steven L. Grafe, Editor
(University of Oklahoma)
A Treasury of Photographs from the Late 19th Century

The Huwoman Race
Mike Ervin
[Article]
Another Sly Reading of Would-Be History
by the Sly and Comic "Crip" Writer

Perceptions of Risk
Vs. the Real Thing
Eula Biss
[Reading]
How You and I Misrepresent
the Least Dangerous
And Forget the Most Dangerous

The Louisiana Purchase[G]
Joseph J. Ellis
[Reading]
What Historian Ellis Calls
"The Most Consequential
Executive Decision in American History"

Mr. Pou & the Alphabet
The Hell Poem
John Berryman's Poetry
One a Poem for His Son,
Another a Poem about His Madness

Letter to the Dead[G]
Affonso Romano DeSant'Anna
[Poetry]
A Poem about the Fact that
Northing at All Has Changed

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #262
www.ralphmag.org/IJ/indexIJ.html
Early Summer 2015

Poole's Paradise
Viruses
When Is a Rejection Just Too Quick?
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Great Readings
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Readings That Get
The Most Repeat Business
From Our Readers

Fire and Movement*
The British Expeditionary Force
And the Campaign of 1914

Peter Hart
(Oxford)
The First Four Months of WWI,
As Seen through the Eyes of the
New Young Recruits

Under the Tripoli Sky
Kamal Ben Hameda
(Peirene)
A Boy on the Streets of Tripoli,
Surrounded by Magic, and Magic Women

The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price*
Purveyor of Superior Funerals
Wendy Jones
(Europa Editions)
A Young Funeral Director
Finds Himself Caught with
The Wiles of Women
(That He May Have Brought on Himself)

One Day I Will
Write About This Place
A Memoir
Binyavanga Wainaina
(Graywolf Press)
A Trip through the Languages (and Oddities)
Of Modern-Day East Africa

Into the War
Italo Calvino
(Mariner Books)
The Early Days of WWII in San Remo
As Experienced by the Young Fascists

Transoceanic Lights
S. Li
(Harvard Square Editions)
They Come from China to the Promised Land
And All They Found Was
Nag-Nag-Nag (and 16-Hour Work Days

Time Present and Time Past*
Deidre Madden
(Europa Editions)
The Normal Buckley Family Turns Out
To Have Strange Delusions (and Odd Children)

Eight Mile High
Jim Ray Daniels
(Michigan State University Press)
Normal Workaday Families in Michigan
Turn Out to Have Some Violent Surprises

All-American Poem
[G] Matthew Dickman
(American Poetry Review)
A Young Eccentric Poet
Shows Himself to Have Some
Surprises in the Form (and Truth) Department

Timothy[G]
Or, Notes of An Abject Reptile
Verlyn Klinkenborg
Josephine Bailey, Reader
(Tantor --- 5 CDs)
Gilbert White, the Naturalist's Naturalist
From Two Centuries Ago, as
Observed by His Turtle

Your Super-Ego Is
Just an Old Nag
Adam Phillips
[Reading]
How the Super-Ego Can Be
Compared to Don Quixote's Horse, Rocinante

Radio:
Our Golden Age
L. W. Milam
[Article]
Memories of Being Carried Aloft
By the Sound of Late-Night Radio

The New Telephone and
The New Airplane at War
Peter Hart
[Reading]
A New War ---
And New Means of
Transmitting Information

Tito
Aaron Cometbus
[Poem]
Stuff in Your Apartment
That the Landlord Should Never See

The History of the Minstrel Show
Richard Garcia
[Poem]
A Free Verse Memory of
Some Deplorable Entertainments

Shiva Goes Surfing
Off Newfoundland
Francis S. Pickins
[Poem]
The Great Warm Mother
In the Cold Northeast


Issue #263
www.ralphmag.org/IK/indexIK.html
Mid-Summer 2015

Another Letter from Warren Buffet
Edward Everett
Twisted Spoon Press
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Several Dozen Odd Letters
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Wonderful (and Freaky) Letters
That Have Come into Our Offices
Over the Past Twenty Years

The Insect Cookbook
Food for a Sustainable Planet
Arnold van Huis, Henk van Gurp, and Marcel Dicke
(Columbia University Press)
Things You Should Be Eating Right Now
(Grasshopper, Mealworms, Thrips, Bedbugs, Roaches)
So Our Children Can Survive and Thrive

Cultural Encyclopedia
Of the Penis
Michael Kimmel, Christine Milrod,
And Amanda Kennedy, Editors
(Rowman & Littlefield)
The Weenie, in High (Somewhat Tedious) Relief

Turing
Pioneer of the Information Age
Jack Copeland
(Oxford)
The Inventor of the Computer
And the Big Question:
Did the British Government
Drive Him to Suicide?

Time Ages in a Hurry*
Antonio Tabucchi
(Archipelago Books)
A Small Selection of Several of the Author's Stories

Doctors Without Borders
Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams
Of Médecins Sans Frontières

Renée C. Fox
(Johns Hopkins University Press)
A Sociological Study of the
Pioneering Medical Group That Has Helped
In Some of the Most Decimated
Parts of the World

White Hunger
Aki Ollikainen
(Peirene)
The Finnish Famine of 1866 - 1868

I Refuse
Per Petterson
(Graywolf Press)
A Novel of Two Men of Norway
One Rich, One Poor,
Both Unhappy

The Chair
Poems
Richard Garcia
(BOA)
A Hundred of So of What Our Reviewer Calls "Box Poems"

The Emperor, C'est Moi
Hugo Horiot
(Seven Stories Press)
Adventures in Inexpressiveness
By Our Young (and Feisty) Hero

Hidden Witness[G]
African-American Images from
The Dawn of Photography
To the Civil War

Jackie Napolean Wilson
(St. Martin's Press)
The Discover, by Our Writer,
Of a Treasure-Trove of
Ancient Photographs

Broken Land[G]
Poems of Brooklyn
Julia Spicher Kasdorf
Michael Tyrell, Editors
(New York University Press)
A Bracing Collection of
Poems on Brooklyn
From the 17th Century to Now

The Evening
The World Ended
The Phantom
[Article]
Memories of Some Unforgettable
AA Meetings (in the Basement)

The Trial of
Fatty Arbuckle[G]
Wanda Felix
[Article]
The Trial of the Century
(From Ninety Years Past)

Fighting with Father
Pers Petterson
[Reading]
A Classic Battle
Out of Oedipus

Eugène Atget's Paris
& Walter Benjamin
Alexander Gelley
[Reading]
Classic Views of the Streets of Paris

To a Nose
Francisco de Quevedo
[Poem]
The Hooter, Examined

Strawberry Pie
Xia Yu
[Poem]
The Sweet (and the Sad) of Love

Death Is Sitting
At the Foot
Of My Bed [G]
Oscar Hahn
[Poem]
How Not to Sleep Well at Night


Issue #264
www.ralphmag.org/IL/indexIL.html
Late Summer 2015

Pictures of neuropsychological syndromes
The man sitting on the car
Letters We Never Finished Reading:
Making a killing in Afghan treasure
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen Great Detective Stories
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Great Murder Books
That Have Come to Us since 1994

Rust
The Longest War
Jonathan Waldman
(Simon and Schuster)
A Study of the Unseen Disaster
(Creeping Over Us As We Speak!)

Mayumi and The Sea of Happiness*
Jennifer Tseng
(Europa Editions)
A Young Love (Very Young) with
The Town Librarian and the High School Student
(Who Loves Lollipops)

The Small House at Allington*
Anthony Trollope
Read by David Shaw-Parker
(Naxos Audiobooks)
One of those Heavy (and Very Funny) Books
Out of 19th Century England

My Depression
A Picture Book
Elizabeth Swados
(Seven Stories)
You Think You Got Problems?
Wait Until You try This "Comic Book"

Blue-Eyed Boy
A Memoir
Robert Timberg
(Penguin)
They Literrally Burned Off His Face in Vietnam
And He Survived to
Live with It, and Even Prosper

The Hollow Land*
Jane Gardam
(Europa Editions)
A Family of Cumbrians Meet
An Equally Droll Family from London

Papyrus:
The Plant That Changed the World
From Ancient Egypt to Today's Water Wars

John Gaudet
(Pegasus Books)
The Earliest Paper in All
Its Ever-Varying Forms

Hummingbirds*
Ronald Orenstein
(Firefly Books)
Many of the Almost 350 Species
Represented in the Luscious Book

The Reluctant Matador
A Hugo Marston Novel
Mark Pryor
(Seventh Street Books)
A Fairly Big Turkey about
Murderous Doings in Barcelona

Blind Moon Alley*
John Florio
(Seventh Street Books)
A Startlingly Good Mystery Set in Prohibition Philadelphia

The Chrysler Building[G]
Creating a New Icon
Day by Day

David Stravitz
(Princeton Architectural)
The Original Construction Photographs Revealed

Tropical &
Subtropical Trees[G]
An Encyclopedia
Margaret Barwick
(Timber Press)
Over 2000 Trees Described and Shown
--- Many in Color

'Til the Well Runs Dry*
A Novel
Lauren Francis-Sharma
(Henry Holt)
We Loved This One So Much That
We Decided to Review it Again (with Added Pith)

Chopped Liver
Mike Ervin
[Article]
A Crip's Demand that the Many Rip-Off Joints
Take Notice of the Disabled Too

Bisphenol-A
and Aluminum Cans
Jonathan Waldman
[Reading]
The Truth About What You Are Drinking
With Your Coke or Beans

Papyrus and the Crocodiles
John Gaudet
[Reading]
A Trip Down the Nile Seeking Papyrus
(And Crocodiles)

Autumn
T. E. Hulme
[Poem]
One of the First Imagist Poems

The Meaning of Life
From The Mahabharata
Peter Brook
[Drama]
Thoughts on Creation (And Love)


Issue #265
www.ralphmag.org/IM/indexIM.html
Early Fall 2015

Talking Cows
Trotsky and the Ice Pick and
the Twitter/Instagram generation
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Motherless Babies and Widowers in Your Country
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen Great Detective Stories
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Great Murder Books
That Have Come to Us since 1994

Fifteen Great Travel Books
And a Couple that Bombed
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Great Travel Books
That Have Come to Us since 1994

Seven Steps to Train Your Mind
Gomo Tulko
(Wisdom)
The Many Ways to Involve one
in the Practice of Buddhism

The Wright Brothers*
David McCullough
(Simon & Schuster)
The (Often Surprising) Studies and Designs
Of the Two Brothers from Dayton, Ohio

Uniforms
Bettina Hubby
(Ice House)
The Whimsy of the Official Uniform
Shown, Often, Without Bodies Attached

Judge This
Chip Kidd
(TED/Simon & Schuster)
A Man Who Has Designed Many a Book Cover
Tells Us the Goods and Bads of Representative Salesmanship

Aquarium
David Vann
(Atlantic Monthly)
Young Caitlin Falls in with the Fishies
And Gets Excoriated by an Irate Mother

The Dead Lake
Hamid Ismailov
(Peirene)
A Young/Old Musician of Kazakhstan and the Decimation
Of a Community Under the Shadow of the Bomb

A Higher Form of Killing
Six Weeks in World War I that Forever
Changed the Nature of Warfare

Diana Preston
(Bloomsbury)
Bombing Cities, Using Gas in the Trenches
And Sinking Passenger Ships on the High Seas

The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick
(Brilliance Audio)
What Would Have Happened if the Japanese
And Nazi Germany Had Won WWII

Wil Usdi
Thoughts from the Asylum
A Cherokee Novella

Robert J. Conley
(University of Oklahoma Press)
A Most Brilliant Cherokee Goes Bonkers
At the End of the Civil War

Those Who Leave and
Those Who Stay
Elena Ferrante
Europa
Two Young Ladies from the Slums of Naples
Grow Up and Grow Apart

H. L. Mencken on
American Literature[G]
S. T. Joshi, Editor
(Ohio University Press)
They Call Him the Sage if Baltimore;
Better, the Snarl of Baltimore

White Waters and Black[G]
Gordon MacCreagh
(Chicago)
Too Many Scientists Seeking
The Headwaters of the Amazon

The Sargasso Sea
Of Motherboards
Dr. Phage
[Article]
The Parts of the Computer that
Go Bump in the Night

Dog Eating
Mountain Lion
Matt Sumell
[Reading]
What to Do if Your Favorite Dog
Goes Missing in the National Park

Rabbi Eliakum ben Yahya
Meets the KKK
Steve Stern
[Reading]
What Happens to the Fiery Cross
When the Good Rabbi Appears on the Scene

From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old[G]
Hanan Mikha'il 'Ashrawi
[Poems]
Poetry from Palestine and Israel

The Spider Sonnet
John Whitworth
[Poem]
The Solution to Pollution is to
Stop Ingesting Spiders

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #266
www.ralphmag.org/IN/indexIN.html
Early Fall 2015

The Vivisection Mambo
I, I I & I I I
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles, Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen Great History Books
And a Couple of Stinkers
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Great History Books
That Have Come to Us since 1994

Tales of Remarkable Birds
Dominic Couzens
(Bloomsbury)
Thirty-nine of the Rarest and Most Beautiful
Birds from All over the World

Making Nice
Matt Sumell
(Henry Holt)
An Obnoxious Son-of-a-Bitch that the Reader ---
perhaps --- Would Prefer not to Read about

Falling in Love
With Hominids*
Nalo Hopkinson
(Tachyon)
Several Weird Tales --- Well-Executed but Sinister
--- of People of Another World if not Our Own

Hitting the Streets
(Courir les Rues)
Raymond Queneau
Rachel Galvin, Translator
(Carcanet)
Oddly Appealing Short Tales from
The Streets of Paris

Dangerous When Wet
Jamie Brickhouse
(St. Martin's Press)
A Memoir of Growing Up as Mama's
One and Only, Who Somehow
Managed to Survive

The Meat Racket
The Secret Takeover of
America's Food Business*

Christopher Leonard
(Simon & Schuster)
A Terrific Study of Oligopolistic Tendencies
In the American Meat Market

A Brief History of
Portable Literature
Enrique Vita-Matas
Anne McLean & Thomas Bunstead Translators
(New Directions)
An Odd-Ball Picture of Duchamp, Benjamin, et al
And Their Search for the Most Portable Literature of Them All

H Is for Hawk
Helen Macdonald
(Grove Press)
A Look at the H for Highly Proclaimed
Novel which Our Reviewer Opined May Have
Slighted the Goshawk and the Reader as Well

Wondering Who You Are*
Sonya Lea
(TinHouse Books)
A Stunning Tale of Losing Your Love in the Operating Room
And Finding Him Different (but Great)
--- Lurking Right Next Door

The Cartel
A Novel
Don Winslow
(Knopf)
A Novel History Novel Proving that We've All
Lost the War on Drugs

Emanuel Swedenborg's
Journal of Dreams[G]
Commentary by
Wilson van Dusen
(Swedenborg Foundation)
In Which Dreams from 250 Years Ago
Tell Us More about the Interpretation of Dreams
And Somewhat Bit Less Than the Dreamer

Isaac Bashevis Singer and
The Lower East Side
Bruce Davidson, Photographer
(Mead Art Museum/
University of Wisconsin)
A Terrific Story Interlaced with
Terrific Photographs

Loving One Who
Thinks He Has
Forgotten You[G]
Sonya Lea
[Reading]
Making Love with One Who Can't Remember
Ever Having Made Love Before

The Refugees and the Picnic
Jon Gallant
[Article]
A Vivid Reincarnation of the Refugee Story from 1989 ---
Where Lost People Were Much More Honored than Those in 2015

God Must Be Female[G]
J. P. Donleavy
[Reading]
A man Who (Perhaps) Loves
And Remembers Too Much

Four In The Morning
Dame Edith Sitwell
[Poem]
"The Allegro Negro Cocktail Shaker"

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #267
www.ralphmag.org/IO/indexIO.html
Mid-Fall 2015

The Wrong Icehouse
Bladder Bags
Crowned Cranes
A General in the Chinese Army
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Beavers in Florida
Plato and Platypus
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Neglected Novels
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of Great Novels
That Have Come to Us
Over the Last Two Years

Idyll Threats
Stephane Gayle
(Seventh Street Books)
A Cop from the Big City
Resigns to Solve Murders in Idyll CT

I Can Give You Anything But Love
Gary Indiana
(Rizzoli)
A Kind of an Autobiography Seeded with Some Reportage
And No End of, ulp, The Beast. With Two. Backs.

The Liar's Wife
Four Novellas
Mary Gordon
(Brilliance Audio)
Four Attempts to Resolve the Usual Catholic Paradox
Favored by the Author

The Ville Rat
Martin Limén
(Soho)
A Visit with Detectives in South Korea
With Good if not Overwhelming Local Color

Like a Beggar*
Ellen Bass
(Copper Canyon)
Poetry of the
"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" School

Woodpeckers of the World*
A Photographic Guide
Gerard Gorman
(Firefly)
1,000 Photographs of the
239 Piciformes Worldwide

Enabling Acts
The Hidden Story of How the Americans
with Disabilities Act Gave The Largest U. S. Minority
its Rights

Lennard J. Davis
(Beacon Press)
An Exhaustive Study of the
Formation of the ADA

The Moonstone*
A Romance
Wilkie Collins
(Naxos)
A Knockout Audio Version of the Famed
Thriller from 1868

More Harm than Good [G]
What Your Doctor May Not
Tell You about Common Treatments
And Procedures

Alan Zelicoff, M.D.
Michael Bellomo
(Amacom)
A Fascinating Study of the Treatments
That May Leave You Worse Off

Help Your Dog Fight Cancer [G]
What Every Caretaker Should Know About Canine Cancer
Laurie Kaplan
(Kaplan)
More Than You May Ever
Want to Know about
The Illnesses of Your Pet

Letter from Seattle
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Thoughts on Twitter, Twaddle, Twerp, and Trump
Along with the Vandalism of the Glassy
Works of Dale Chihuly

The New Silence
Mark Morford
[Reading]
A New (And Alarming)
Silence on the Bird Front

Benny's Scratch Pad
The House of the Dealer
Gary Indiana
[Reading]
The Volcanic Trash From
Out the Front Door

The Burning Ghats
India, 1900
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
[Reading]
Scenes from Early Vistas of India

A Head Full of Maggots
Reconstructing the Crime Scene
Wilkie Collins
[Reading]
A Great Scene of Rebellion in the Ranks
from The Moonstone

Ordinary Sex
Ode to the Fish
Ellen Bass
[Poetry]
Great Scenes of Love (And Fish)
From a Master Poet

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #268
www.ralphmag.org/IP/indexIP.html
Late Fall 2015

Claude Debussy
Five Duffers & Five Million Dollars
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Great Pix
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Photographs that Appear with Our Reviews
That Seem to Generate the Most Interest

The Essential Ginsberg*
Allen Ginsberg
Michael Schumacher, Editor
(Harper Perennial)
An Excellent Collection of Ginsberg's
Poems, Essays, Criticism, and
Best of All, His Astute Interviews

Peterson Reference Guide to Owls
Of North America and the Caribbean
Scott Weidensaul
(Houghton Mifflin)
Thirty-nine Species of Owls of United States,
Canada, Mexico, and various islands of the Caribbean
With Hundreds of Fine Photographs

The Shift
One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives
Theresa Brown
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
Full Time Nurse on the Oncology Ward ---
With Some Agonizing Moments (And Surprises)

Walking with Abel*
Journeys with the Nomads
Of the African Savannah
Anna Badkhen
(Riverhead)
A Year with the Cow-herders of Mali ---
Filled with Some Astonishing Moments of Beauty

God's Bankers
A History of Money and
Power at the Vatican

Gerald Posner
(Simon & Schuster)
A Heavily Annotated Study of
The Finances of the Mother Church

The Hare with Amber Eyes
A Hidden Inheritance
Edmund de Waal
(Vintage)
A Wonderful History of a Family
(With a Great Collection of Netsuke)

The Martian*
Andy Weir
R. C. Bray, Reader
(Brilliance Audio)
A Wonderful Reading of the Now-
Famous Classic of Survival
(Where None Should Survive)

The Vienna Melody*
Ernst Lothar
(Europa Editions)
A Classic Novel of the Old School:
A Vienna Family from 1890 - 1945

Solo
A James Bond Novel
William Boyd
(Vintage)
In Which a Veteran Writer Tries to ---
And Succeeds in --- Out-Fleming Fleming

The Story of the Lost Child
Elena Ferrante
(Europa Editions)
Elena and Lila in the Very Last (Alas!)
Novel of Their Life Together (and Apart)

The Lower River
A Novel of Africa
Paul Theroux
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
You Go to Africa and Think You Got It
Only to Find Out That It's Got You

Crossroads
Women Coming of Age in Today's Uganda
Christopher Conte, Editor
(Crossroads)
Fourteen Women of a Coffee Cooperative of Uganda
Tell What It Is Really Like to Be Lively (and
Active) in 21st Century Africa

The American People
In World War II [G]
David M. Kennedy
(Oxford)
A Superb History of 1941 - 1945
Filled with a Series of Unbelievable
(And Forgotten) Events

Another Day of Life[G]
Ryszard Kapuściński
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
The Polish Journalist Who Went Anywhere ---
In This Case Angola ---
When All the Others Were Bailing Out

How the Stop the War Coalition Coalesced
Jon Gallant
[Article]
How the STWC Viewed
The End of Communist Rule
(And Their Take on America's Role)

Alice's Adventures Under Ground
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
Douglas Cruickshank
[Article]
How to Access the Real, True Copy of
The Original Alice in Wonderland

Playing Under Lenin,
Lenin and the Cheese Sandwich
Gary Shteyngart
[Readings]
Two Short Excessively Funny
Readings from Little Failure

Good News (and Three Others)
Matt Walker
[Poems]
Four New Poems of the New
Neo-Realist School

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #269
www.ralphmag.org/IQ/indexIQ.html
Early Winter 2015

Shostakovich's Symphonies and Soviet Politics
"I have wittenessed youre heathens picture of our Savior."
Signs and Machines: Maurizio Lazzarato
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Eleven Supposed Reviews
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Older Reviews that May
Defy the Scepticism of Our Editors
And Strain the Good Will of Our Readers

The Trace*
A Novel
Forrest Gander
(New Directions)
The Fearsome Story of Two Gringos
Lost in the Chihuahua Desert Amongst
A Band of Narcotraficantes

Symphony for the City of the Dead
Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
M. T. Anderson
(Candlewick Press)
The Evolution of Shostakovich's Music
Amidst Soviet Censorship and Harassment

Coming Ashore
Catherine Gildner
(ECW Press)
An Unabashed Yank Intellectual
In Oxford, Cleveland, and Canada in
The early Seventies

Beauty is a Wound*
Eka Kurniawan
(New Directions)
The Classic Epic Transferred to
Indonesia with a Full Cast of Ghosts,
Revolutionaries, and Whores

Blackass*
A Novel
A. Igoni Barrett
(Graywolf Press)
An Unemployed Man in Kenya
Is Suddenly, Overnight, Transformed
Into a Honky in Traffic-Filled Lagos

Moonshine, Monster Catfish,
And Other Southern Comforts
Travels in the American South
Burkhard Bilger
(Arrow Books)
Tall Tales Direct from
The Moonshine Stills, Cat Fish Spawning
Grounds and Cock Fight Rings

Iris Murdoch
As I Knew Her
A.N. Wilson
(Arrow Books)
The Famed Writer Dissolving
Into Alzheimer's as Told, Faithfully
by Her Writer Husband

The Milli Vanilli Condition*
Essays on Culture in
The New Millennium

Eduardo Espina
(Arte Publico)
A Variety of Essays --- Improbable, Astonishing ---
From a Fresh New Voice out of
The Wilds of Montevideo, Uruguay

The ALC We Do Not See
Africa's Invisible Art, Literature & Culture
Douglas Cruickshank
[Article]
Writings, Books, Exhibits, Collections
Designed to Prove that Africa Is
More than a Pernicious Basket-Case of Starvation,
Ignorance, and a Warring Post-Colonial Nightmare

American Windmills[G]
An Album of Historic Photographs
T. Lindsay Baker
(University of Oklahoma)
A Collection of More than 200 Photographs
Of the Great Driver/Mover of
19th Century Plains America

The Wisdom of Wilderness [G]
Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature
Gerald G. May
(Harper/SanFrancisco)
A Christian Psychiatrist Tells of
His Own Mystical Experiences

Nights in the Pink Motel [G]
An American Strategist's Pursuit of Peace in Iraq
Robert Earle
(Naval Institute Press)
Earle, Somewhat of a Misfit Himself, Tells of His Own Bizarre Adventures
In the Far East Reaches
Of the Second Bush's Administration

Not Rabies, Baby, But Baby Scabies [G]
L. W. Milam
[Article]
One Man's Pursuit of a Cure
For The Seven-Year Itch

The Clemson Cripmas Party
L. W. Milam
[Article]
And His Suggestions for How
A Disgraced Fraternity from the Old South
Can Redeem Itself

The Seige of Leningrad
Matthew Tobin Anderson
[Reading]
900 Days of Starvation
In the Freezing Days of
Early WWII

The Liquid Country of Memory
Eduardo Espina
[Reading]
When a Tsunami Becomes
A Symbol of Water, Japan, and
"the Stimulus and Disorder of Acceptance."

Water As Literature
Eduardo Espina
[Reading]
And When Virginia Woolf, Hart Crane, and
"A visually Inaugural Territory" Become One

"Good Girl,"
"What Do Women Want?"
and "You Don't Know What Love Is"
Kim Addonizio
[Poetry]
Four Contemporary and Powerful Poems<

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #270
www.ralphmag.org/IR/indexIR.html
Mid-Winter 2015 - 2016

T. S. Eliot Sticks It to Geo. Orwell
A Letter to Philip Glass
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Dynamite Books from
The Last Days of 2015
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some books from the late year
that received our much-coveted *star*
--- being a book of some merit.

Hardcore Zen*
Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and The Truth about Reality
Brad Warner
(Wisdom)
Zen Isn't What You Think; and What's More,
This So-Called Enlightenment Is
A Confounded Let-Down --- So Don't Bother.
But Do It!

The First Bad Man*
A Novel
Miranda July
(Scribner)
A Giantess Invades Her Home
And then a Tiny Babe. Zounds!

Words without Music*
A Memoir
Philip Glass
(Liveright)
This Glass Pretends He's a Composer
So He Can Drive Taxi and Plumb
--- And Write a Dynamite Memoir

The Argonauts*
Maggie Nelson
(Graywolf)
Friendly Essays on Sex-Change Operations and
Having Babies and Chatting with the Babe In Utero

The Looking-Glass Sisters
Gøhril Gabrielsen
(Peirene)
Two Very Chilly Ladies Living in the Northernmost
Part of Norway --- and Trying to Figure Out a Way
to Get Rid of Each Other

Wall Flower
A Life on the German Border
Rita Kuczynski
(University of Toronto Press)
She Was But a Child When the Ugly Fence Went Up
--- And She Spent the Next Twenty Years Depressed
(In the Arms of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)

How to Live Well with
Chronic Pain and Illness
A Mindful Guide
Toni Bernhard
(Wisdom)
Imagine Being Struck Down in a Doctor-Resistant Truma
That Drains YourEnergy, Your Well-Being, and even
Your Desire to Be With Friends and Family

Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
(Spiegel & Grau)
This Slim, Everyone-Loves-It-Tome
Shows Itself to Be Filled with Insight
(And Way Too Much Ennui)

We Were Brothers
Barry Moser
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
This Somewhat Famous Illustrator Tells Us
All about His Crappy Childhood with Brother Tommy

The City of Falling Angels[G]
John Berendt
(Sceptre --- 2005)
The Word's Most Famous City Has Its
Ups and Downs (and Can Get Downright Stinky Too)

Human Rights in African Prisons[G]
Jeremy Sarkin, Editor
(Ohio University Press)
A Roam through the Shadow Side of
Living with All the Stops Pulled Out

A Sense Sublime[G]
Richard Quinney
(Borderland Books)
A Puzzling Story that Includes Meister Eckhart, William Wordsworth,
Wendell Berry, Lau-Tzu, and the Texas Zen Master, Willie Nelson

The Guise of Another[B]
Allen Eskens
(Seventh Street Books)
A Detective and Drago Basta ---
"A Coldblooded Veteran of the Balkan Wars"

The War Reporter [B]
A Novel
Martin Fletcher
(Thomas Dunne Books)
All the Reasons You Could Ever Possibly Need
As to Why Your Should Never Got to Serbia

The Music of Gold
Philip Glass
[Reading]
A Visit to the Serra Pelada Gold Mine in northern Brazil

A Contrarian Philosopher in East Berlin Rita Kuczynski
University of Toronto Press
The Proposed Ballet Drawn from
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Dirty Artists & The Clean Rich
Joyce Cary
[Reading]
That Formidable Con Man and Artist Gully Jimson
At Loose Ends in the Land of the Rich

Starfish
Eleanor Lerman
[Poem]
Floating, Floating Down the River
Millions of Us Lucky Starfish

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #271
www.ralphmag.org/IS/indexIS.html
Late Winter 2015 - 2016

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 Years
The 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 Food

Sonia 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 China
Ou 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 Mystery
Terry Shames
(Seventh Street Books)
A Murder in the Texas Panhandle ---
With the Loveable Old Sheriff
(and His Cows)

A Kind of Compass
Stories on Distance
Belinda 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 Threads
Robert 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

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[O] = Books from Past Years Reviewed
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #272
www.ralphmag.org/IT/indexIT.html
Early Spring 2016

Odd Friendships [Among Animals]
Russian Artists under Stalin
Getting Mooned by God
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 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

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[O] = Books from Past Years Reviewed
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


Issue #273
www.ralphmag.org/IU/indexIU.html
Mid-Spring 2016

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


Issue #274
www.ralphmag.org/IV/indexIV.html
Late Spring 2016

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"


Issue #275
www.ralphmag.org/IW/indexIW.html
Early Summer 2016

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 Bombing 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


Issue #276
www.ralphmag.org/IX/indexIX.html
Mid-Summer 2016

Halstead's Syndrome
Blue People
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Our Favorite New Books
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Dozen or So of The Best
New Books from the Early Months of 2016

Gaudeamus Killitur
Solving the Problem of
On-Campus Guns

Jon Gallant
[Article]
Need for a Hitman
In the Groves of Academe

Inventing a Better Mousetrap*
200 Years of American Industry in
The Amazing World of Patent Models

Alan & Ann Rothschid
(Maker Media)
750 New Inventions as Registered
In the U. S. Patent Office 150 Years Ago

One Wild Bird at a Time
Portraits of Individual Lives Bernd Heinrich
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
A Passionate Love
For the Wild Birds of Maine

The Word Detective
Searching for the Meaning of it All
At the Oxford English Dictionary

John Simpson
(Basic Books)
Bringing the OED into the Electronic Age

Heroes of the Frontier
A Novel
Dave Eggers
(Alfred A. Knopf)
A Mother and Her Two Children on the Run to Alaska

The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering
Jeffrey Rotter
(Metropolitan Book)
A Mindless Future in America

Overdiagnosed
Making People Sick
In the Pursuit of Health

H. Gilbert Welch, M.D. et al Sean Runnette, Reader.
(HighBridge Audio)
The Way the New Medical Testing Machines
Are Turning Most of Us
From People into Patients

Hitler, Mussolini, and Me
A Sort of Triography
Charles Davis
(The Permanent Press)
Turning the Two Dictators into Comic Figures

Prayer Warriors[G]
The True Story of a Gay Son, His Fundamentalist,
Christian Family and the Battle for His Soul

Stuart Howell Miller
(Alyson)
The Childhood of a Gay Activist

Been There, Done That[G]
Eddie Fisher / David Fisher
(Thomas Dunne Books)
The Real Skinny on Being America's Hearthrob

The Million Dollar Mermaid[G]
Esther Williams
(Simon & Schuster)
The Real Skinny on Being America's Siren

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED . . .
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Student Activists and Their Elaborate Demands

Happy Baby[G]
Stephen Elliott
(Picador)
A Chicago Prison Novel Abetted with a
Strange PTSD: the Need to Suffer (as if He Were Back in Prison)

My Sister
L. W. Milam
[Article]
A Story of Polio and
A Death in the Family

Frogs' Legs and BB Guns
Barbara Holland
[Reading]
The Total Innocence of Childhood in America, 1945

Viking Breath
Anatoly Kudryavitsky
[Poem]
How does it feel to be the Cultural Attaché
for the North Pole?

In Our Stairwell
Gennady Alexeyev
[Poem]
"As for humankind, we should not
laugh at it but mourn it."

Living in a Whale's Belly
Anatoly Kudryavitsky
[Poem]
The Happiest Years of Jonah's Life
Beiing the Ones he Spent in
the Belly of a Whale


Issue #277
www.ralphmag.org/IY/indexIY.html
Late Summer 2016

Catherine Gildiner's Coming Ashore
Hitler, Mussolini and Me
The Men With Broken Faces
The Best Dictionary and
The Word "Callipygian"
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Astonishing Letters from the Past
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Collection of a Dozen or So of
The Best Or Oddest Letters
To come into this Magazine

Artrage!
The Story of the BritArt Revolution
Elizabeth Fullerton
(Thames & Hudson)
An History of Some of the Most Bizarre, Unexpected,
Deranged, Demented, Obnoxious, and (Sometimes)
Funny Art to Come out of England

Tiger Milk*
Stefanie de Velasco
(Head of Zeus)
Two Volatile Middle Eastern Fourteen-Year-Olds
Wired Up on the Streets of 2010 Berlin

Reading from Behind
A Cultural Analysis of the Anus
Jonathan A. Allan
(University of Regina Press)
Eight Poems, Films, Books and Stories Deeply Anal-yzed to
Gauge the Profundity of Pleasure Available in
That Place Where the Sun Don't Shine

Arthur & George
Julian Barnes
(Brilliance Audio)
The Meeting of Two Figures from Nineteenth Century
England - - - George Edalji and Arthur Conan Doyle for
The Freedom of the Former, the Latter to Become a Sherlock

The Walls of Delhi*
Three Novellas
Uday Prakash
(Seven Stories Press)
Three Great Stories out of India Concerning
Corruption, Honor, Passion and Kafkaesque Shenanigans

All This Gold Hurts My Mouth
Katherine Leyton
(Icehouse/Goose Lane)
Feminist Poetry - - - with Vengeance - - - from Canada

All Is Not Forgotten*
Wendy Walker
(St Martins Press)
A Psychotherapist Turns Deceptive, Conniving
And Scheming (To Shield His Family)

Garden Insects of North America[G]
The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs
Whitney Cranshaw, Editor
(Princeton)
2,000 of the Scary Beasties Given Ample Showtime

Of Two Minds[G]
Tanya Luhrmann
(Vintage)
The Training, Practice (and Imperfection)
of American Psychology

An American Summer[G]
Frank Deford
(Sourcebooks Landmark)
An Exceptionally Vulgar Novel about
A Young Lady in an Iron Lung

Getting Old and Hoary
L. W. Milam
[Article]
What It's Like When the Grad Students
Send You a Ten-Page Questionnaire on Something Your Did
(and Forgot) Decades Ago

Ultrasound & Fury
Natalie Angier
[Reading]
What to Do When the Doctors Tell You that
Your Child Will Be Born Severely Handicapped

My Favorite Chickens
L. W. Milam
[Reading]
Raising Strange Looking Birds
from What They Call the Fancy

A Special Present for Sister Angelica
C. A. Amantea
[Reading]
A Present for the Saintly Nuns Who
Work in the Far Trenches of the Desert

A Petition on Behalf of Saddam Hussein
Rev. A. W. Allworthy
[Reading]
A Petition Filed Long Ago to
Spare Saddam Hussein's Life So
He Could Be Tortured by Graduate Students

This Beautiful Pool
Henry James
[Poem]
A Poem Drawn from the Novelist's Prose

Lower Forms of Life
Photograph of Mother
Katherine Leyton
[Poems]
Two from All the Gold Hurts My Mouth


Issue #278
www.ralphmag.org/IZ/indexIZ.html
Early Fall 2016

Christian/Holiness vs.
All This Gold Hurts My Mouth
American Candide
Patricia Smith Poetry &
Carlos vs. Lolita
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Eighteen Great Books of Photography
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Collection of a Dozen-and-a-Half of
The Best Books
on Art or Photographs

The Mindful Writer
Dinty W. Moore
(Wisdom)
Fifty-eight mots from
Fifty-Eight Writers on Writing

A Song to My City
Washington, D. C.
Carol Lancaster
(Georgetown University Press)
One Person's Somewhat Biased
View of Our Center of Government

Show Me All Your Scars
True Stories of Living with Mental Illness
Lee Gutkind, Editor
(In Fact Books)
Twenty People Who Suffer from a Number of
Mental Difficulties Tell Us What It's Like

Lithium Jesus
A Memoir of Mania
Charles Monroe-Kane
(Wisconsin)
One Who "Hears Voices" Explains
What That Is Like

Concrete Carnival*
Danner Darcleight
(The Permanent Press)
One Who Is Serving "Twenty-Five Years to Life"
Explores, in Detail, the Culture of Living in the Joint

Don Juan*
A Satiric Epic of Modern Life
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Jonathan Keeble, Reader
(Naxos)
Seventeen Cantos from 1825
Read Expertly by a Master

Hurricane Street
Ron Kovic
(Akashic)
The Author of Born on the Fourth of July
Tells of a Strike Against the VA
Over Hospital Care for the Disabled

See Also Deception
A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery
Larry D. Sweazy
(Seventh Street Books)
Some Oddballs Living in the Wilds of
North Dakota Beset by a Mad Killer

At the Ends of the Earth[G]
A History of the Polar Regions
Kieran Mulvaney
(Island/Shearwater)
Things You Possibly Don't Want to Know
About the Top and Bottom of the Earth

Haiku[G]
R. H. Blyth
(Heian International)
A Terrific Overview of Japan's National Poetry
With Copious (and Great) Samples

Sacred Pain[G]
Hurting the Body for
The Sake of the Soul

Ariel Glucklich
(Oxford)
The Tried-and-True Techniques of Those Who
Torture the Rest of Us in the Name of the Divine

Enemy Agents
In My Kitchen
Dr. Phage
[Article]
The Ability of So-Called Passive Objects to
Take Over (and Ruin) Our Everyday Life

Cold Water in Warm Springs
L. W. Milam
[Article]
Revealing the Take-Over of
One Great Rehabilitation Center by Those
Who Do Not Wish It (or Us) Well

My Friend Emma[G]
C. A. Amantea
[Article]
A Paean to "The Mother Teresa of Oaxaca"

The Year They Tried
To BlockThe Deputy
Warren Hinckle
[Article]
One of the Great Essays of
The Late Rabble-Rouser Writer

The Sunne Rising
John Donne
[Poem]
One of the Great Metaphysical Poems
From the Seventeenth Century

Cambridge Ladies
E. E. Cummings
[Poem]
A Tribute to Those Who Live in Furnished Souls
Are Unbeautiful and Have Comfortable Minds

After the Persian
Louise Bogan
[Poem]
Yes, Love - - - But I Do Not Wish to Know
The Depths of Your Terrible Jungle

Marriage
Chris Rock
[Paradox-of-the-Month]
Nelson Mandela Before (and After)

Issue #279
www.ralphmag.org/JA/indexJA.html
Mid-Fall 2016

Infantilizing the Geezers
Cradles
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The October Surprise
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Ancient Review, Articles and Readings from RALPH
Brought back to life by new readers of the magazine

Rats:[G]
Observations on the History and Habitat
Of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants

Robert Sullivan
(Bloomsbury)
An extended exegesis on those seedy little suckers
who hide in the lower reaches and waste our precious resources
(and who didn't come from Norway)

The Ascent of Money[G]
A Financial History of the World
Niall Ferguson
(Penguin)
The wonderful thinking of one of our most provocative economists
on the origins of capital and assets

Courthouses of Minnesota[G]
Mary Logue
Doug Ohman, Photographer
(Minnesota Historical Society)
100 or so great old buildings dedicated
to bureaucracy and guilt (and greed)

Pepys' Diary[G]
Samuel Pepys
Kenneth Branagh, Reader
(HighBridge Classics)
Memoirs of the lusty man of the Admiralty of 18th Century England

Vogue Women
Georgina Howell
(Thunder's Mouth Press)
100 photographs drawn from the magazine
from the last fifty years

Spanish Places[G]
B. E. Marsh
(Syren)
Memories of an American on
the Iberian peninsula fifty years ago

All the Fishes
Come Home to Roost[G]
An American Misfit in India
Rachael Manija Brown
(Rodale)
Unsettling memoirs of one who grew up with
a hippy mother and father in India many years ago

What I Think I Did[G]
A Season of Survival In Two Acts
Larry Woiwode
(Basic Books)
An ego-filled reminiscence of
a lifetime of writing and hero-worshipping

The Blast[G]
Alexander Berkman
(AK Press)
A history of the radical anarchist monthly

Terrors of the Table[G]
The Curious History
of Nutrition

Walter Gratzer
(Oxford)
Things you don't want to know
about the food you put in your mouth

Lindbergh[G]
Triumph and Tragedy
Richard Bak
(Taylor)
Things you don't want to know
about America's great hero

Peoples of the Plateau[G][B]
The Indian Photographs of Lee Moorhouse, 1898 - 1915
Steven L. Grafe
(University of Oklahoma Press)
Great shots from southern Plateau Indians
of the Columbia Basin and
the Umatilla Indian Reservation

The Little Black Book Of Grisélidis Réal[G][B]
Days and Nights of An Anarchist Whore
Jean-Luc Hennig
(Semiotext(e)/MIT)
Just like it says: the rules and
strictures of an anarchist whore

Radio in the Dark Ages

L.W. Milam
[Article]
Memories of the days when
American radio was diverse (and diverting)

Apollo:[G][B]
Through the Eyes Of the Astronauts
Robert Jacobs, et al, Editors
(Abrams)
Gorgeous photos of the various missions

Speech Before the Last Graduating Class
of L'École du Néant
C. A. Amantea
Article
Life Science in 25 easy steps - - -
with recipes for great eatings

Man's Search For Meaning
Viktore E. Frankl
[Reading]
The secret of success - - -
don't aim for success

Belief
Douglas Cruickshank
[Reading]
A surprising cure for a fatal illness

Did I Know You Back Then?
Fade to Black
Colleen J. McElroy
[Poems]
Memories of life
in St. Louis and at Antioch

Cuando era tigre
Lisa Rappoport y Sasha Ryerson
[Poem]
Growing up as a tiger


Issue #280
www.ralphmag.org/JB/indexJB.html
Late Fall 2016

Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky
&
The Least Tern
Learning to See
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Great Disability Literature
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Thirty-three writers on the fate of all mankind
with reviews of their several titles

Jack London
The Paths Men Take Photographs, Journals and Reportages
David Sapienza, Editor
(Contrasto)
A selection from some of the thousands of photographs
that London took - - - along with a brief biography

Sightings of the Sacred
Cattle in Uganda, Madagascar and India
Daniel Naudé
(Prestel)
Photographs of the Zebu cattle of Madagascar and the Ankole of Uganda - - -
with some thoughts on their spiritualism

The Huntress
The Adventures, Escapades, and
Triumphs of Alicia Patterson

Alice Arlen and Michael J. Arlen
(Pantheon)
The life adventures of the one of the first aviatrixes In America
founder of the highly successful Newsday of Long Island

Blood Memory*
Colleen J. McElroy
(University of Pittsburgh Press)
Over fifty poems of growing up Black in St. Louis

Fire and Blood:*
The European Civil War, 1914 - 1945
Enzo Traverso
(Penguin/Verso)
A theory that the bloodshed in Europe
should be seen in terms of a civil - - -
e.g., familial conflict

The Whole Earth Field Guide
Caroline Maniaque-Benton
Meredith Gaglio, Editors
(MIT Press)
A contemporary recasting of the famous catalogue
from forty-five years ago

War and Turpentine*
Stefan Hertmans
(Pantheon)
A superb study of Hertmans' grandfather who
lived through the idyls of the Edwardian period and
the ghoulish trench warfare of WWI

Enlightening the World[G]
The Creation of the Statue of Liberty
Yasmin Sabina Khan
(Cornell University Press)
The story of the why and how of the American landmark

The Exploding Whale
Bernd Heinrich
[Reading]
How to deal with the new dead whale on your favorite beach

Belinda's World Tour
Franz Kafka
[Reading]
Postcards from an imaginary world trip that Kafka
sent to a favorite young girl

Becoming Amerikanskiy
Gary Shteyngart
[Reading]
A Russian family's life-changing trip to Florida

Monstrosities{G]
Bodies and British Romanticism
Paul Youngquist
(Minnesota)
Tales from days "when it was OK
to gawk at strange-looking people"

Body, Remember[G]
Kenny Fries
(Wisconsin)
Memories of growing up disabled

You Can't Be Too Careful
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Warnings to those who want to continue to use old,
outdated programs on old outdated comupters

Still Quiet on the Belgian Front
Stefan Hertmans
[Reading]
The exact (and doleful) experience of trench warfare from WWI

With Albert Schweitzer
(And Adlai Stevenson)
h In Darkest Africa
Alica & Michael Arlen
[Reading]
What it must have been like - - -
perhaps disconcerting at best - - -
to visit the good doctor's hospital in Africa

Blue Exits
Aaron Smith
[Poetry]
Poetry about contemplated suicides


Issue #281
www.ralphmag.org/JC/indexJC.html
Early Winter 2016

Mae Sarton
Jack London
A Letter from Timothy Geithner
The Foresaken
The Moscow Trials
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Why of Whys
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Myriad of Puzzling Paradoxes to
Puncture Your Paradigms

Surviving the Gulag*
A German Woman's Memoir
Ilse Johansen
(University of Alberta Press)
Ilse Survived Four Years in a Variety of
Gulags in Russia During and After WWII

Dog Years*
Stories
Melissa Yancy
(University of Pittsburgh)
Nine Sterling Short Stories - - -
Mostly about the Ill and the Dying

The History and Uncertain
Future of Handwriting
Anne Trubek
(Bloomsbury)
Stories about the Growth and Change of Penmanship
Over the Last Four Thousand Years

A Thousand Miles from Nowhere
John Gregory Brown
(Leo Boudreaux/Little Brown)
A Laconic Ex-High School Teacher
Survives Katrina (By Leaving Before It Hits)

White Trash
John King
(PM Press)
The Nurse of Nurses Meets
Her (and Our) Opposite

Sleeping on Jupiter
A Novel
Anuradha Roy
(Graywolf)
A Visit to the Indian Temples by
Five of the Most Laconic Characters in
Modern Literature

Snowball in a Blizzard
A Physician's Notes on Uncertainty in Medicine
Steven Hatch, M. D.
(Basic Books)
A Mildly Interest Accounting of What to Believe
And What to Disbelieve in Contemporary Medicine

But What If We're Wrong?*
Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
Chuck Klosterman
(Blue Rider Press)
Dozens of Counterintuitive Ideas about
Where We Think We're Going
And Where We Think
We Are and Have Been

In the American Grain[G]
William Carlos Williams
(New Directions)
Several Dozen Essays About America
From One of Our Best Poets

Primeval and Other Times[G]
Olga Tokarczuk
(Twisted Spoon)
The Much Overrun Polish Town
(With Magic and Spirits)

O Bitter, Bitter Gall
L. W. Milam
[Article]
A First-Hand Recounting of the Internal
Adventures of Belly and Bladder (Gall)

The Octomom vs. The Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Ben Eastham
[Reading]
How the Octomom Was Bested
By the Mortgage Breakdown of 2009

The Face Transplant Man
Melissa Yancy
[Reading]
A Tale of Those Who Are
Willing to Replace Your Face

In the Time of The Lime Trees
Olga Tokarzuk
[Reading]
A Winsome Story out of
Primeval and Other Times

Without Vodka
Adventures in Wartime Russia
Aleksander Topolski
(Steerforth)
Life and Hunger in the Gulag

When Tony Hoagland Says
My Maternal Instincts
Are Impressive
Jenny Browne
[Poem]
I don't know what he means.
Some people will eat anything.

Regret
(Poem on the Death of Elvis the Cat)
Jon Loomis
[Poem]
sprayer, shredder of chairs, backhanded gift
from a breakup - - - your ex moved in with her girlfriend,
no pets allowed.


Issue #282
www.ralphmag.org/JD/indexJD.html
Mid-Winter 2016 - 2017

Mae Sarton
Jack London
A Letter from Timothy Geithner
The Foresaken
The Moscow Trials
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Why of Whys
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Myriad of Puzzling Paradoxes to
Puncture Your Paradigms

Surviving the Gulag*
A German Woman's Memoir
Ilse Johansen
(University of Alberta Press)
Ilse Survived Four Years in a Variety of
Gulags in Russia During and After WWII

Dog Years*
Stories
Melissa Yancy
(University of Pittsburgh)
Nine Sterling Short Stories - - -
Mostly about the Ill and the Dying

The History and Uncertain
Future of Handwriting
Anne Trubek
(Bloomsbury)
Stories about the Growth and Change of Penmanship
Over the Last Four Thousand Years

A Thousand Miles from Nowhere
John Gregory Brown
(Leo Boudreaux/Little Brown)
A Laconic Ex-High School Teacher
Survives Katrina (By Leaving Before It Hits)

White Trash
John King
(PM Press)
The Nurse of Nurses Meets
Her (and Our) Opposite

Sleeping on Jupiter A Novel
Anuradha Roy
(Graywolf)
A Visit to the Indian Temples by
Five of the Most Laconic Characters in
Modern Literature

Snowball in a Blizzard
A Physician's Notes on Uncertainty in Medicine
Steven Hatch, M. D.
(Basic Books)
A Mildly Interest Accounting of What to Believe
And What to Disbelieve in Contemporary Medicine

But What If We're Wrong?*
Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
Chuck Klosterman
(Blue Rider Press)
Dozens of Counterintuitive Ideas about
Where We Think We're Going
And Where We Think
We Are and Have Been

In the American Grain[G]
William Carlos Williams
(New Directions)
Several Dozen Essays About America
From One of Our Best Poets

Primeval and Other Times[G]
Olga Tokarczuk
(Twisted Spoon)
The Much Overrun Polish Town
(With Magic and Spirits)

O Bitter, Bitter Gall
L. W. Milam
[Article]
A First-Hand Recounting of the Internal
Adventures of Belly and Bladder (Gall)

The Octomom vs. The Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Ben Eastham
[Reading]
How the Octomom Was Bested
By the Mortgage Breakdown of 2009

The Face Transplant Man
Melissa Yancy
[Reading]
A Tale of Those Who Are
Willing to Replace Your Face

In the Time of The Lime Trees
Olga Tokarzuk
[Reading]
A Winsome Story out of
Primeval and Other Times

Without Vodka
Adventures in Wartime Russia
Aleksander Topolski
(Steerforth)
Life and Hunger in the Gulag

When Tony Hoagland Says
My Maternal Instincts
Are Impressive
Jenny Browne
[Poem]
I don't know what he means.
Some people will eat anything.

Regret
(Poem on the Death of Elvis the Cat)
Jon Loomis
[Poem]
sprayer, shredder of chairs, backhanded gift
from a breakup - - - your ex moved in with her girlfriend,
no pets allowed.


Issue #283
www.ralphmag.org/JE/indexJE.html
Late Winter 2016 - 2017

The Holiday Spirit
Ants (or Scorpions) in the Pants
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen Suicides
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Readings and Reviews (and Poems) from
Past Issues on a Vexing Subject

America Chartres
Buffalo's Waterfront Grain Elevators
Bruce Jackson
(Excelsior Editions/ State University of New York Press)
A Look at an Unusual Found Art Construct
The Abandoned Grain Elevators in Buffalo

The Wetback*
And Other Stories
Ron Arias
(Arte Publico)
Fourteen Stories from a New
Magical Realism School

The Golden Age
A Novel
Joan London
(Europa Editions)
A Hospital Romance between
Bookish Frank and Ethereal Elsa

Falling into the Mob*
Steve Zousmer
(Permanent Press)
He Drifts into the Mob by the Back Door
And Becomes the Klutziest Mafioso of Them All

Accidence Will Happen
A Recovering Pedant's Guide
To English Language and Style

Oliver Kamm
(Pegasus)
An Odd Appeal for Us to Honor the Language of
The Streets and Ignore the Pedants

Dance of the Jakaranda*
Peter Kimani
(Akashic Books)
On Building Kenya's "Lunatic Express"
And the Echoes from Sixty Years On

Sixty
A Diary of My Sixty-First Year
Ian Brown
(The Experiment)
A Despairing Document of Our Sixth Decade

The Drowned Detective*
A Novel
Neil Jordan
(Bloomsbury)
An Off the Wall Detective Story of
Mitteleuropa - - - Filled with Mystics, Failing
Marriages, and Improbable Reincarnations

Bugs, Bites, and Bowels[G]
Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth
(Cadogan Guides)
What You Should Fear on Your
Next Visit to Foreign Lands, and
What You Should Ignore

Paris Review Interviews[G]
Introduction by Philip Gourevitch
(Picador)
Fourteen Authors Quizzed - - -
Proving that Those Who Write
Should Mostly Do Only That

Old School[G]
Tobias Wolff
(Knopf)
A Heap of East Coast Prep School Stuff
With Wonderful Takes on Ayn Rand and Robert Frost

Homeless in Academe
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Moving from the Ivory Tower Directly to the
Homeless Tents in the University Parking Lot

The End of Democracy
D. Runciman
[Article]
The Hidden Destructive Violence in America:
Young Blacks in Jail, Older Whites in
Alcohol and Drug-Related Suicide

So You Want to Be a Mobster
A Primer
Steve Zousmer
[Reading]
A Innocent Corporate Schill Is Asked
To Lead a New York Mafioso Gang

On Finding a Lion in Your Bedroom
Lt. Colonel J. H. Patterson, D.S.O.
[Reading]
Owners of the "Lunatic Express" Find
The Lions Are Eating Up All the Prophets

A Guide for Spiritual Tourists
Hannah Faith Notess
[Poem]
It told us whether to cover our heads,
where to remove our sandals.
It told us not to wear shorts if male
and if female to be careful.

Sonnet for My Backyard Crickets
Two Weeks Gone
Jacqueline Osherow
[Poem]
Well, crickets, you're gone again
and again I haven't gotten around
to thanking you properly - - - a habit of mine.
The same thing happened with my ex-husband,
though, at least, in his case, I tried.


Issue #284
www.ralphmag.org/JF/indexJF.html
Early Spring 2017

Ron Arias
Palenque and "Toxicos"
The Strange Death of Thomas Merton
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

15 Knee-Slappers
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Dozen or So of the Funniest Books
from the Early Days of RALPH

Sober Stick Figure
A Memoir
Amber Tozer
(Running Press)
A Full-Time Alcoholic Tells of Her Blackouts, Drunken
Lay-Overs, and the Impossibility of
Stopping with the First Bottle

Tales from Nowhere
Unexpected Stories from Unexpected Places
Don George, Editor
(Lonely Planet)
Thirty or so Horror Tales from Being on the Road
Presented Here as If the Book Were Brand New.
It Ain't - - - Having Been Published Ten Years Ago

Joyce Brothers
The Founding Mother of Television Psychology
Kathleen Collins
(Rowman & Littlefield)
Dr. Brothers Was a Bona Fide Psychology - - -
But She Broke into Television by Pretending to Be
A Master on the Exotica of Boxing

Where I Can See You
Larry Sweazy
(Seventh Street)
Detective Hud Mathews Goes Back to Lake Demmie
Where the Bodies Start Dropping Like Flies

The Tortoise of History
Poems
Anselm Hollo
(Coffee Hoouse)
Exotic Beatnik Poetry by One Who Grew Up in Finland

The Colour of Shadows
Images of Caribbean Slavery
Judy Raymond
(Caribbean Studies Press)
A Few, Very Few, Pictures by Richard Bridgens
With Endless Text on Slavery Horrors in Trinidad

New World Dharma
Interviews and Encounters with
Buddhist Teachers, Writers, and Leaders

Trevor Carolan
(State University of New York)
More than Thirty American Masters of Buddhism
on the Coming of that Discipline to these Shores

One String Guitar
A Novel
Mona de Vestel
(Harvard Square Editions)
A Catalogue of Horrors of
[1] The Rwandan genocide
Followed by a Catalogue of Horrors of
[2] 19th Century American Indians

Missing Believed Killed[G]
The Remarkable Story of
A Japanese POW Camp Survivor

John Baxter
(Arum Books)
Three Years During WWII as a Japanese Prisoner

Nights in the Pink Motel[G]
An American Strategist's Pursuit of Peace in Iraq
Robert Earle
(Naval Institute Press)
A Sterling Account of John Negroponte's "Thinker" - - -
Trying to Come Up with an "Exit Strategy" from Iraq

Reviews of Two New Hollywood Epics
"Monster Trucks" and "Great Wall"
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Two Recent Films Dissected with Aplomb

A Brief, Subjective, Personal, Biased, Irregular Survey of
Arts and Literary Sites on the Web
Douglas Cruickshank
[Article]
Ten Great Literary/Arts Links to Be Found Online

The Municipal Jail in Mérida
Charles Portis
[Reading]
A Jail That Doesn't Care If You Go Hang

Thomas Merton's Death
Interview with John Russell
[Reading]
Some Thoughts on the Controversial
Death of the Famed Religious Figure

Hunchback Mountain
100-Year-Old Poet
Anselm Hollo
[Poetry]
Modigliani
first name Amedeo
didn't live long enough
to paint you
this morning
(or one of many mornings)
stretched out
beside me

Letter from Breslau Prison
Rosa Luxemburg
[Reading]
Letter to Sophie Liebnecht on
Solitary Christmas in Prison


Issue #285
www.ralphmag.org/JG/indexJG.html
Mid-Spring 2017

RALPH's Stodgy Humor
Drugs and The Winter War
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Looking for Betty MacDonald
The Egg, the Plague,
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I

Paula Becker
(University of Washington Press)
An Exhaustive Examination of
the Life and Works of the Elegant
Comic Pacific Northwest Writer

The Boat Rocker
Ha Jin
(Pantheon)
An Odd Book Telling of
A Man Obsessed by the Writings
of his Ex-Wife

The Enigma of Iris Murphy**
Stories Maureen Millea Smith
(Livingston Press)
The Moving Tale of a Public Defender Who
Is Suddenly Defending Herself against Death

And the Monkey Learned Nothing*
Dispatches from a Life in Transit
Tom Lutz
(Sightline/University of Iowa)
Sixty Eight Dispatches from All Over the World
In Comic, Detailed Form

The Hemingway Thief
Shaun Harris
(Seventh Street Books)
A Lost Manuscript of Hemingway Found in
Seedy Ensendada Baja

Get Well Soon
History's Worst Plagues and
The Heroes Who Fought Them

Jennifer Wright
(Henry Holt)
A Semi-Comic Approach to the Most Devastating
Diseases that Have Plagued Humanity

Polio Boulevard**
A Memoir
Karen Chase
(Excelsior/State University of
New York Albany)
A Gentle Story of the Author's Time in Hospital
with the Now Conquered Disease

Human Heart, Cosmic Heart
A Doctor's Quest to Understand, Treat,
And Prevent Cardiovascular Disease

Thomas Cowan, M. D.
(Chelsea Green)
An Off-the-Wall Disquisition on Heart Disease - - -
And Some of Its More Obscure Cures

Heavy Metal
A Novel
Andrew Bourelle
(Autumn House)
A Surprisingly Vivid Story of Two Brothers and
Gang Warfare through the Haze of Heavy Metal

A Frozen Hell[G]
The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939 - 40
William R. Trotter
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
How the Russians Were Stymied for
The Better Part of a Year in Beating
The Finns in 1940 -1941

Abbott Awaits[G]**
A Novel
Chris Bachelder
(Louisiana State University Press)
A Classic Child Raises the Father from
An Unknown (and Superb) Author

As Long as I'm
Still Entertainable
Mike Ervin
[Article]
One of the Best Disabled Writers on
What Happens When They Take Away Everything

Cameron Kills Pretty Enemy LLP
Maureen Millea Smith
[Reading]
A Lawyer from the Rez - - -Learning How
To Live with His Interns

Life on a Chicken Ranch
Daily Tasks on the Chicken Ranch
Betty MacDonald
[Readings]
Making the Best of Life on
The Wilds of Washington State

A Kennedy in Each of Us
Gary Margolis
[Poem]
The senator's son wasn't supposed to tell
anyone his mother and father were drunks
he loved. Like you and me, he was the secret
they counted on, to hold things in.

Recuerdo
Edna St. Vincent Millay
[Poem]
We were very tired, we were very merry - - -
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable - - -
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon . . .

The Bestiary[S]
Or, Procession of Orpheus
Guillaume Apollinaire

X. J. Kennedy, Translator
(Johns Hopkins University Press)
The Twenty-Six Aanimals in The Bestiary
In Woodcuts by Raoul Dufy.


Issue #286
www.ralphmag.org/JH/indexJH.html
Late Spring 2017

Al Capone's Beer Wars
The Founders of RALPH
This Life by Karel Schoeman
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

15 Wriggly Animals
The Editors
[List]
Earlier reviews about those creatures who love to love you
(or even want to love you to death)

WPA Buildings*
Architecture and Art of the New Deal
Joseph Maresca
(Schiffer)

A Run-Down of The Great Depression Experiment with
Grand, Restrained, Gently Elegant Public Buildings

A Guided Tour of Hell
A Graphic Memoir
Samuel Bercholz
(Shambhala)
One man's guided visit to the Buddha hell to get cooked
- - - alternating with frozen blisters and chilblains

Isabella of Castile
Europe's First Great Queen
Giles Tremlett
(Bloomsbury)
One of the first Iron Iron ladies

Elephants in My Back Yard*
A Memoir
Rajiv Surendra
(Regan Arts)
All he wanted to do was to land the starring
role in The Life of Pi - - - but failing that,
he charms to reader beyond all good reason

A Thin Bright Line*
Lucy Jane Bledsoe
(University of Wisconsin)
The scary gay lives of American women of the 1950s

At the Edge of the Orchard
Tracy Chevalier
(Penquin)
The ordinary day-to-day horrors of staking out
land in mid-nineteenth century America - - - and yet
ending up as expert on native trees.

The Selected Letters of John Cage*
Laura Kuhn
(Wesleyan University Press)
An engrossing collection - - - the best
of the atonal black-arts magician

This Life[G]*
Karel Schoeman
(Archipelago)
A transfixing novel on survival of
the Africaans in South Africa 150 years ago

Arrogance[G]*
Joanna Scott
(Picador)
The mad momentous artist Egon Schiele
revealed in all his bawdy splendor

The Richard A. C. Greene Campaign for
Washington State Land Commissioner
L. W. Milam
[Article]
One of the most ferociously bizarre
political campaigns of the last fifty years

Cancer in Midlife
Maureen Millea Smith
[Reading]
Mid-life woe from The Enigma of Iris Murphy

The Exploding Whale
Bernd Heinrich
[Reading]
The Do's and Don't's of caring for a
whale body washed up on your beach

Heart Test with An Echo Chamber
Margaret Atwood
[Poem]
Wired up at the ankles and one wrist,
a wet probe rolling over my skin,
I see my heart on a screen
like a rubber bulb or a soft fig, but larger,
enclosing a tentative double flutter,
the rhythm of someone out of breath
but trying to speak anyway; two valves opening
and shutting like damp wings
unfurling from a gray pupa.

Seven Poems from the Writers of RALPH
Tootie-Fruit ME & Ass-Grasp LA
C. A. Amantea
[Poems]
In conclusion, I should like to report that our brains
Are now pickled & dried with love, & are thus weighted
In units of filial darkness. Our watches separate time
From space (in planetary feet) & thus put us on the
Very last train to Bugger Bean OH or Assgrasp LA,
All singing
Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Mani.


Issue #287
www.ralphmag.org/JI/indexJI.html
Early Summer 2017

To Say It Unbridled
Scabies, Baby
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Weirdest Books
The Editors
[List]
Some of the Oddest Books that have
Come into the Magazine for Review

Such a Waste of Stars*
Poems
Tom Crawford
(The Search)
One of the Best of the New Poets - - -
with a Typically Dry & Buddha Wit of It All

Vintage Trailer Voyeur
A Peek Inside the
Unique Trailer Culture

Victoria Ocken
(Schiffer)
Those Lovely Floating Land Launches - - -
Here Renewed with Care

Mrs. Caliban**
Rachel Ingalls
(New Directions)
A Reissue of the Great Novel from Thirty Years Ago
- - - Complete with a Jolly (and Steamy)
Green Lover (and His Sedate Love)

What She Ate:
Six Remarkable Women and
The Food that Tells Their Story

Laura Shapiro
(Viking)
Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Gurley Brown,
Dorothy Wordsworth and Eva Braun - - - and the Food They Did
(And More Often Didn't) Eat

Olio*
Tyehimba Jess
(Wave Books)
Being Black in a Slave World - - - and the
Tools used to Get Out from Under

Unforbidden Pleasures**
Adam Phillips
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A Terrific Study of the Contradictory Forces
That Made Us (and Oedipus, & Adam & Eve) Tick

Finks
How the CIA Tricked The World's Best Writers
Joel Whitney
(OR Books)
Our Best (and Most Wily) Literature Types
Lulled into Thinking They Were Being Free (While
Marching to The Beat of a Different Drummer)

A People's History of Poverty in America[G]
Stephan Pimpare
(The New Press)
How to Control the Poor with Monies
(That Keep Them on the Straight, the Narrow
and the Locked Up)

Skin Deep[G]
Tattoos, the Disappearing West, Very Bad
Men, and My Deep Love for them All

Karol Griffin
(Harcourt)
A Terrific Autobiography about How to
Decorate Tough Guys with Needle and Ink

The Ultimate Retirement
L. W. Milam
[Article]
The Final Laying Out of Our Final Days

Refusing an Honorary Degree
The Proper Diet, and
Telling the President of TWA Airlines
About the Best
Flight Food

John Cage
[Readings]
It Wasn't All About Time (4:33)
In the Master's World

Slavery and the Welfare State
Stephen Pimpare
[Reading]
Public Relief, Indentured Servitude and Slavery

Redwing, The Pie Is Now
Tom Crawford
[Poetry]
"It's silly to talk to the peach tree
about future pies, that's why
we have portfolio managers
for those who want to get ahead,
which can be hell on a good night's sleep."

Three More Poems
Survival
The Forge
Bad Day at the Beauty Salon

Lynne Knight, George Bilgere, Maggie Estep
[Poetry]
I sat inside like a portrait, pretending to be a portrait
when he came by, holding my breath, eyes staring straight
beyond him. Your mother's disappeared again,
he'd call to my daughter, who'd come near, feign
a search for me. Some people need to escape,
she'd say, and wave her hand, and turn away.

Lusitania[S]
An Epic Tragedy
Diana Preston
(Walker)
The Moment-by-Moment of the Great Disaster
(That Changed the Course, for Worse)
of the U.S. - - - 1917

[G] = Great Reviews, Readings, or Poems of the Past
[O] = Books from Past Years Reviewed
[B] = Brief Reviews
*A Book that the Editors Believe Merits Your Attention


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