* = A Book the Editors Believe to Be Exceptionally Worthwhile
www.ralphmag.org/IX/indexIX.html
Mid-Summer 2016
Title
Author
Publisher
Subject
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 NovelDave 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 HealthH. 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
[G] = Great Reviews or Great Readings from the Past
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
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 |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
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) |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
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 |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
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 |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
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. |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
|
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. |