RALPH's
Reviews, Articles,
Poetry, and Readings:
Mid-Spring 2010ff


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 #200
www.ralphmag.org/FZ/indexFZ.html
Mid-Spring 2010

Enrico Dandolo
The Doge of Venice
Oil from Iraq
The Effects of War
Charles Bukowski on Boils
Subscriptions to RALPH in Foreign Currencies
I Love You
Prince Al
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

OUR 200th ISSUE:
The Best of the Best
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Fifteen of the Most Worthy Books
Reviewed on Our Pages over the
Last Few Years

Some Also-Rans
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Thirty Almost Equally Worthy Books

A Dozen Stinkers
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Twelve or so Ghastlies
We Reluctantly Reviewed

Editors' Picks
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Best Articles, Poems,
and Readings from
Our First Five Years

The Paradox of Paradoxes
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Selection of
Fifteen of Our Favorite Paradoxes:
Questions of the Ages ---
Posed But Never Exposed

Bad Cop
New York's Least Likely
Police Officer Tells All

Paul Bacon
(Bloomsbury)
The Harold Lloyd of the
15th Precinct Tells All

The Black Girl Next Door
A Memoir
Jennifer Baszile
(Touchstone/S&S)
Growing up Rich (but
Misunderstood) in Palo Verdes

The Unwanted Sound of
Everything We Want[B]
A Book about Noise
Garret Keizer
(PublicAffairs)
Everything You Don't Want to Know about
Screeching, Howling, Buzzing, Sirens,
Motors, Drones and Whistles

Daughters of Zion[B]
A Family's Conversion to Polygamy
Kim Taylor
(Rogue Hill)
Everything You Don't Want
to Know about Having
400 or 500 In-Laws

La's Orchestra Saves the World[B]
A Novel
Alexander McCall Smith
(Pantheon)
The Guy Who Invented
"The #1 Ladies Detective Agency"
on Life in WWII Britain

First Light:[B]
Five Photographers Explore
Yosemite's Wilderness

Charles Cramer, et. al.
(Heyday Books)
An Exquisite Collection of
Photographs of Hidden Yosemite

"On the Death of Mr Barker of Hammon,
and his wife who dyed both together"
George Herbert
[Poem]
An Exquisite Exposition on
the Death of a Loving Couple

Revolutionaries: A New History
of the Invention of America

Jack Rakove
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Thesis Being that the
Revolutionaries of 1776
Were Not Very Revolutionary at All

In the Time of the Lime Trees
Olga Tokarczuk
[Reading]
The Limes that Grow on
the Jeszkotle to Kieice Road

The Partial Vapor
Pressure of Khometz
Dr. Phage
[Article]
The Difference Between
the Letter KHET and
the Letter MEM

Primeval and Other Times*
Olga Tokarczuk
Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Translator
(Twisted Spoon)
The Lives (and Deaths) of
a 20th Century Polish
Community

Dancing Under
the Red Star[G]
The Extraordinary Story of
Margaret Werner, the Only
American Woman to
Survive Stalin's Gulag

Karl Tobin
(Water Brook)
Years of Enforced Isolation
in Gorky --- and in the Gulags

Meeting D. T. Suzuki
Jacob Needleman
[Reading]
"What is the Self?"
"Who is asking the question?"


Issue #201
www.ralphmag.org/GA/indexGA.html
Late Spring 2010

Dada
Rototillers
Adrienne Rich
The Winter War
Music of the Middle Ages
One in a Million, Baby
Burkina-Faso Gold Mine
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

African Taxi Opera
Douglas Cruickshank
[Article]
Getting around Uganda in an Overloaded Taxi

The Best American Travel Writing --- 2009
Simon Winchester,
Editor
(Mariner)
True Stories from around the World

The Blue Tattoo
The Life of Olive Oatman
Margot Mifflin
(Nebraska)
The Life of a Victorian Woman
with a (Blue) Tattoo on her Chin

Upgraded to Serious [B]
Heather McHugh
(Copper Canyon Press)
Contemporary American Poetry

Is Life Like This?[B]
A Guide to Writing
Your First Novel in
Six Months
John Dufresne
(Norton)
A Point-by-Point Guide to Making a Novel

A Bomb in Every Issue[B]
How the Short, Unruly Life of
Ramparts Magazine
Changed America

Peter Richardson
(The New Press)
A History of the Explosive
Magazine from the Sixties

My Men[B]
Malika Mokeddem
(Nebraska)
The Autobiography of
the Great Feminist from Algeria

Difficult Days
David Lodge
[Reading]
Notes from a Fictional Writer's Life

The Edge of Physics
A Journey to Earth's Extremes
To Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

Anil Ananthaswamy
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Some of the More Obscure Elements of
Astrophysics Examined

Pipestone
My Life in an Indian
Boarding School

Adam Nordwall
(Adam Fortunate Eagle)
(Oklahoma)
Life in a BIA School

Justine velocisima
Oliver Welden
[Poem]
Love Poem from Chile

Revolution on Paper
Mexican Prints 1910 - 1960
Mark McDonald, Editor
(Texas)
Diego Rivera
José Clemente Orozco
David Alfaro Siqueiros
and 32 Others

Prisons of Poverty*
Loïc Wacquant
(Minnesota)
How Prisons are Taking over from the Ghetto

The Demonic Myth of
"The Prison-Industrial Complex"
Loïc Wacquant
[Reading]
The Growth of Prisons Caused
by Some Other Factors

Résistance*
A Woman's Journal of
Struggle and Defiance in
Occupied France

Agnès Humbert
(Bloomsbury)
Four Years as a Prisoner of the Nazis

Washington Sculpture:*
A Cultural History of
Outdoor Sculpture in
The Nation's Capital

Hames M. Goode
(Johns Hopkins)
Over Five Hundred Sculptures
Illustrated and Explained


Issue #202
www.ralphmag.org/GB/indexGB.html
Early Summer 2010

Wisawa Szymborska
A Graduation Speech
My Bloody Life (Reymundo Sanchez)
Chrome Hairpin Tables
Hopping to Hear
FORGIVE MY INDIGNATION
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Edward Lear:
Egyptian Sketches
Jenny Gaschke
(National Maritime Museum)
Sketches and Water-colors by
the Famous Rhymster

Points of View
Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs
John Falconer,
Louise Hide, Editors
(The British Library)
200 Classic Black-and-White Photographs
from the 19th Century

I Am Not Sidney Poitier
Percival Everett
(Graywolf)
A Riotous Novel about Growing Up as
Not a Movie Star

Scenes from
La Cuenca de
Los Angeles*
Y Otros Natural Disasters
Susana Chávez-Silverman
(University of Wisconsin)
A Spanglish Version of Love and Loss
In San Francisco (and the World)

Rhyming Life & Death
A Novel
Amos Oz
Nicholas de Lange
Translator

(Mariner)
The Famous Author Gives
A Reading on Tel Aviv (and Finds Love)
(Sort Of)

Making Poems
Forty Poems
with Commentary
by the Poets

Todd Davis
Erin Murphy
Editors
(Excelsior/University of New York)
Poems, Each with Narrative by the Writer

Audition
Ryu Murakami
Ralph McCarthy, Translator
(Norton)
A Scary Novel about A Woman's Revenge

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
The Incredible Inside Story of
The Collapse of Lehman Brothers

Larry McDonald,
Patrick Robinson
(Ebury Press)
The Story, as Told by One
Who Was Near (But Not
Too Near) the Top

The Collected Poems
Of Dylan Thomas:
Original Edition
Introduction by Paul Muldoon
(New Directions)
Almost 100 Poems
By the Welch Writer
And Orator

Meteorites
Caroline Smith, et al
(Firefly)
A Short Volume on Some of
Those Thousands of Extraterrestrial Visitors

Florida's Great Ocean Railway
Building the Key West Extension
Dan Gallagher
(Pineapple Press)
Flagler's Folly in
Photographs and Drawings

Human Rights in African Prisons[G]
Jeremy Sarkin, Editor
(Ohio University Press)
Essays on the Countries You Should
(And Should Not) Get Arrested in

Mitsubishi Galante
Jon Gallant
[Article]
How the Writer's Family
Came into the Auto Business

"Busto- and Lip-Inflated
Blow-Arriba Dolls"
Susana Chávez-Silverman
[Reading]
Going Malling Filled con
Mi Peor Fobia

A Lifetime of Pickles and Lard Sandwiches
Ted Kooser
[Reading]
Growing up in Iowa
100 Years Ago

"From the Tower"
Heather McHugh
[Poetry]
21st Century American Poetry

"Signs You Are Ovulating"
"What We Think About
The Missing Girl"
Christine Hamm
[Poetry]
21st Century American Poetry


Issue #203
www.ralphmag.org/GC/indexGC.html
Mid-Summer 2010

Edward Lear Poems
Art from Abrams
La Cuenca de Los Angeles
Ethel Merston
A Light that Reaches to Heaven
Bible Banners
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Two Days to Leave
The Readers of RALPH [Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Bonobo Handshake
Vanessa Woods
(Gotham)
Going Native with Mankind's
Nearest (Perhaps) Relative

Little Boy Blues
A Memoir
Malcolm Jones
(Pantheon)
Life with Mother in the North Carolina/
South Carolina Borderlands

Bryson's Dictionary of
Troublesome Words[G]
A Writer's Guide to Getting it Right
Bill Bryson
(Broadway Books)
The English Language
Seen as a Magpie

Chroma
A Book of Color
Derek Jarman
(Minnesota)
The Primary Colors (and Assorted Others)
Against a Background of Blue

Flawless*
Inside the Largest
Diamond Heist
in History

Scott Andrew Selby,
Greg Campbell
(Union Square)
Invading a Diamond Center Safe in Antwerp
and almost Getting away with it

Bad Nature*
Or, With Elvis in Mexico
Javier Marías
(New Directions)
Sordid Adventures in Acapulco
and Mexico City

Hudson River Panorama
A Passage through Time
Tammis K. Groft, et. al.
(Albany Institute of History and Art)
Albany, the Erie Canal, and
Hudson River History

Madre and I
A Memoir of Our Immigrant Lives
Guillermo Reyes
(Wisconsin)
Succeeding in America
Despite Being Young,
Gay and Bashful

Oscar Wilde In America
The Interviews
Matthew Hofer,
Gary Scharnhorst
Editors
(University of Illinois)
Forty-Eight Newspaper Interviews with
the Prophet of Aestheticism

"Beaning Mr. Kopex"
"Spilling Seed"
Pete Dexter
[Reading]
Two Riotous Sequences
from Spooner

U. S. Grant
American Hero,
American Myth

Joan Waugh
(North Carolina)
A Worshipful Account of
the Last Years of the
Soldier and President

"When I Die"
"Cremation"
Carol Chou,
Pia Aliperti
(Hanging Loose Press)
Two Poems from the Anthology,
When We Were Countries


Issue #204
www.ralphmag.org/GD/indexGD.html
Late Summer 2010

Napoleon
The Hudson River
Rom LcO'Feer
Touch Me All Over
Dog Product Business
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Polish Speakers Only
Fowl Play
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Great Poetry Books
The Editors
[List]
Twelve Poetry Books Our Editors
Have Found to Be Especially Fetching

Dining on the B&O
Recipes and Sidelights
From a Bygone Age

Thomas J. Greco
(Johns Hopkins)
Classic Food Served in
the Classic Dining Cars of
the Classic B&O Railroad

The Bug-Club
Douglas Cruickshank
[Article]
Life in Uganda with Grasshoppers
and Other Edible Bugs

Brilliant
The Evolution of
Artificial Light

Jane Brox
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

The History of Artificial Light
Eskimos and the Long Winter Darkness
Jane Brox
[Reading]
The Dark Nights of Arctic Winters

Climate Refugees
Collectif Argos
(MIT)
The Real Facts of those
Who Are Living Day-to-Day with
the Effects of Global Warming

Ground Black People
The Guardian [Reading]
A Misprint that Caused Thousands
To Cough (Fitfully)

Let's Get Free
A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice
Paul Butler
(The New Press)
A Former Prosecutor
Looks at Our Crowded Jails

The Long Song*
Andrea Levy
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A Novel of Slavery on
a Sugar Plantation in Jamaica

Travels in the Reich, 1933 - 1945
Foreign Authors in Germany
Oliver Lubrich, Editor
(University of Chicago)
Excerpts from the Writings of
Three Dozen Travellers in Germany
During the Nazi Years

1989 and
The Cloud of Unknowing
Jon Gallant
[Article]
A Commentary on Victor Sebestyen's
Revolution 1989

I Curse the River of Time
Per Petterson
(Graywolf Press)
Love for Mother Rebuffed
There in Oslo and Jutland

Borges at the Northside Rotary
David Kirby
[Poem]
Trying to Get the Babbitts to Love the Epic

Best Ever Travel Tips
Tom Hall, Editor
(Lonely Planet)
A Handy Guide on Surviving
in the World Out There

America's Famous and
Historic Trees[G]
From George Washington's
Tulip Poplar to
Elvis Presley's Pin Oak

Jeffrey G. Meyer
(Houghton Mifflin)
An Expert on the Great and Famous Trees of America


Issue #205
www.ralphmag.org/GE/indexGE.html
Early Fall 2010

Gutzon Borglum
Les Belle-lettres en RALPH
Browning in Jamaica
I Am Miss Nicy
Selling Sheers
Letters We Never Finished Reading
A Little Quell
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Stars
The Editors
[List]
Twelve Books from the Last Year
that Our Editors Found to Be of Special Merit

Bright Wings
An Illustrated Anthology of
Poems about Birds

Billy Collins, Editor
(Columbia University Press)
A Hundred or So Classic
And Not So Classic
Poems about Our Avian Brothers

Crispbread from Stockholm
Theo Findahl
[Reading]
Hunting for Food, in Berlin,
In April, 1945

A Portrait of
Lost Tibet[G]
Rosemary Jones Tung
(Snow Lion)
A Not-So-Lovely Picture of
Tibet from a Hundred Years Past

Fame*
A Novel in Nine Episodes
Daniel Kehlmann
(Pantheon)
Nine Improbable, Wonderful Stories
About Famous (or Lost,
or Dying) People

Your Presence is
Requested at Suvanto
Maile Chapman
(Graywolf)
The Three Weird Sisters Are Back ---
in a Finnish Nursing Home

Five Ways to Kill a Man
André Breton
[Poem]
The Dada Master's Least
Dadaistic Production

Frying the Flag
Lawrence Durrell
[Reading]
The Story of an Improbable Newspaper
In an Improbable Land

The Alternative Kitchen
Garden: An A-Z
Emma Cooper
(Permanent Press)
Going through the Garden,
Literally, A to Z

Over Autumn Rooftops*
Hai Zi (Zha Haisheng)
(Host)
Contemporary Poetry from China

Twelve Days in Persia*
Across the Mountains with the Bakhtiari Tribe
Vita Sackville-West
(Tauris Parke)
A Classic Post-Victorian Traveller
Somewhere in the Midst of Dusty Iran

Retail (and Tribal) Politics
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Commentary on a Recent Article by
Alex de Waal from the LRB

The Illuminated Landscape
A Sierra Nevada Anthology
Gary Noy, Rick Heide Editors
(Sierra College/Heyday)
Poems, Articles, Stories and Journalism
about the Wonders of Eastern California

The Best Spiritual Writing 2010
Philip Zaleski, Editor
(Penguin)
Poems and Tales about Modern-Day
Spiritualism, Freely Defined

The Swan at
Edgewater Park
Ruth Schwartz
[Poem]
A Verse about a "Slightly Grubby"
Bird in Cleveland OH

What Is God?
Jacob Needleman
(J. P. Tarcher/Penguin)
A Somewhat Mystic
(But Quick) Picture of the Divine


Issue #206
www.ralphmag.org/GF/indexGF.html
Mid-Fall 2010

Psychotherapy or Family Therapy:
Jung, Freud and Milton Erickson
Wokking the Dog
Slugs and Christopher Hitchens
Cryptic Letters:
Young Footballers
Dropping a Massage
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Yours Fairly Fried
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Atlas Of the World's
Strangest Animals
Paula Hammond
(Marshall Cavendish Reference)
Fifty Weird (and Not-So-Weird) Beesties

Packing for Mars
The Curious Science of
Life in the Void

Mary Roach
(Norton)
A Summary of All the Repugnant
Things We Will Have to Do
Before We Arrive on Mars

No Place Like Home
Notes from a Western Life
Linda M. Hasselstrom
(University of Nevada)
Twenty Five Essays on the Vanishing West
and the Horrors of
Living in a Big Small City

One Page at a Time
On a Writing Life
Pat Carr
(Texas Tech University Press)
Name-Dropping and the American
Literary Trail (or Trial)

Hitch 22:
A Memoir
Christopher Hitchens
(Twelve, Hachette Book Group)
The Life of a Man of Letters ---
One Who Shocked All by
Becoming a Bush-Baby

Where Did You Go?" "Out."
"What Did You Do?" "Nothing."
Robert Paul Smith
(Norton)
The Classic 1950s Tale
Of Urban Life

Gay Bar
The Fabulous, True Story of
A Daring Woman and Her Boys
In the 1950s

Helen P. Branson
Will Fellows
(Wisconsin)
The Owner of a Gay Bar In Los Angeles
(Before There Were "Gay Bars")
Tells All

Dead End Gene Pool*
A Memoir
Wendy Burden
(Gotham)
She Came from the Vanderbilts ...
And Left Shaking Her Fist
At Them All

When the Danube Ran Red
Zsuzsanna Ozsváth
(Syracuse)
The Fate of the Jews Under
The Hungarian "Arrow Cross Party"

Whales and Other
Marine Mammals of
California and Baja[G]
Tamara Eder
(Lone Pine)
Everything You Want to Know
About these Massive Blow-Hards

Where is Gogol
When We Need Him?
M. Cohan
[Press Release]
A New Art Form
Once Called "Thievery"

Mental Health in Maine
Wendy Burden
[Reading]
Doing Group Therapy Among
The Proletariat of the Northeast

Life on a Chicken Ranch[G]
Betty MacDonald
[Reading]
The Classic Back-to-the-Farm Story

Night Rain
John Hodgen
[Poem]
Memories of Growing Up

The Spider Speaks
Shara McCallum
[Poem]
The Art of the Arachnid

Work
Yusef Komunyakaa
[Poem]
Temptation in the Fields


Issue #207
www.ralphmag.org/GG/indexGG.html
Late Fall 2010

The Third Avenue El
Wokking the Dog
The Wreck of the Grosvenor
My Bloody Life
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Love Loveline
Letters We Never Finished Reading
A Late Client (Dead)
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Roadside America:*
Architectural Relics from A Vanishing Past
John Margolies
Jim Heimann, Editor
(Taschen)
Stunning Pictures from America's
Weird Roadside Attactions

Friendly Fallout 1953
Ann Ronald
(University of Nevada Press)
The Government of the U. S.
Hell-Bent on Poisoning Its Own Citizens

Volunteer:
A Traveller's Guide to
Making a Difference
Around the World

Charlotte Hindle, et al
(Lonely Planet)
Finding International Organizations
Which Help the Poor
And Less Fortunate

The English Is Coming!
How One Language Is
Sweeping the World

Leslie Dunton-Downer
(Touchstone)
An Exploration of the Roots
Of the English Language
And Where It Is Going

The Colossus Of Maroussi*
Henry Miller
(New Directions)
The Controversial Novelist's
First Non-Fiction Work (1939)

Wicked River:
The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild
Lee Sandlin
(Pantheon)
A Hundred Years of the
Wild & Wooly Mississippi

Come Again No More
Jack Todd
(Touchstone)
Boxing and Horse Rustlers and Love and
The Depression in 1930s Nebraska and Wyoming

Tunnel People
Teun Voeten
(PM)
Living Poor in the Depths of Manhattan

Birds of San Diego[G]
Chris Fisher, Herbert Clarke
(Lone Pine)
Telling the Brewer's Blackbird from the Bushtit
And the Brown-Headed Cowbird

The 3rd Ave. El
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Memories of Great Train Rides through
The Wilds of New York City

Great Country Hotels
S. J. Perelman
[Reading]
Nightlife in the Small Town Hotels of Pennsylvania

The Invasion of the Herrings
Günter Eich
[Poetry]
Fishes Swimming in the Room


Issue #208
www.ralphmag.org/GH/indexGH.html
Early Winter 2010

Ram Dass' Still Here
The 3rd Ave. El --- Part II
DADA
"Starfish"
Karl Marx
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Gelatin
Free Book Reviews
Language Imperialism of English
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Deaf and dont hear and suffering
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

A Gift of Angels*
The Art of Mission San Xavier del Bac
Bernard L. Fontana
(University of Arizona Press)
An Impressive Visit to a
300 Year Old Mission in Arizona

At the BBC
Joseph O'Connor
[Reading]
Old Molly Goes to
Broadcast House for
An On-the-Air Drama

Breathing, In Dust
Tim Z. Hernandez
(Texas Tech University Press)
Twenty-Two Drear Stories
About Growing Up in
the California Central Valley

Daring Steps*
Traversing the Path of the Buddha
Ringu Tulku
(Snow Lion)
Meditations on Ngulchu Thogmé and
Other Tibetan Masters

Ghost Light*
A Novel
Joseph O'Connor
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Old Molly Remembers
Her Young Love,
Playwright John Millington Synge

Killer Crónicas
Bilingual Memories
Susana Chávez-Silverman
(Wisconsin)
Growing Up in California,
Falling in Love with Argentina

The Daring Spectacle*
Adventures in Deviant Journalism
Mark Morford
(Rapture Machine)
How to Offend Practically Anyone
(And, in the Process, Everyone Else)

I Only Am Escaped
Alone to Tell Thee
Howard Nemerov
[Poem]
One of a Series from
The Poets Laureate of America

Nevada:
The Making of Modern Nevada
Hal K. Rothman
(University of Nevada)
A History of the State
With Practically No History

The Poets Laureate Anthology
Elizabeth Hun Schmidt, Editor
(Norton)
All the Poets Honored by America Since 1939 ---
With 20 or So Poems by Each

Planet Saturn
Henry Miller
[Reading]
A Steamy Chapter from
The Colossus of Maroussi

The Wesleyan Anthology
of Science Fiction
Arthur R. Evans, et al, Editors
(Wesleyan University Press)
What They Now Call "sf" ---
From the 19th Century
to the Present

Two Poems
Leontia Flynn
[Poetry]
"The Girl Upstairs"
"Vibrator"


Issue #209
www.ralphmag.org/GI/indexGI.html
Mid-Winter 2010 - 2011

The 3rd Ave. El --- Part III
DADA
The Florida East Coast Line:
The Key West Extension
The Full Moon
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Unleavened Bread Rolls
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Your Fairly Friend
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Return
Roberto Bolaño
(New Directions)
Thirteen Stories from
America, Chile and Spain

The Death of RALPH Magazine
Anon
[Reading]
Australian Men
"Crying in their Beers"

Something to Declare
Good Lesbian Travel Writing
Gillian Kendall, Editor
(Terrace/Wisconsin)
Nineteen Writers on
Traveling Gay

Spies of the Balkans
Alan Furst
(Random)
Salonika 1940 - 1941...
And Getting Away from the Germans

Life along the Inner Coast:*
A Naturalist's Guide to the Sounds, Inlets,
Rivers and Intracoastal Waterway
from Norfolk to Key West

Robert and Alice J. Lippson
(University of North Carolina Press)
Birds, Flowers, Fish, and Fauna,
Along the 1200 Mile Intracoastal Waterway

Dead Neon:
Tales of Near-Future Las Vegas
Todd James Pierce
Jarret Keene, Editors
(University of Nevada)
Fourteen Bizarre Short Stories
From Neon Gulch, Nevada

Varieties of Liberalism in Central America[G]
Nation-States as
Works in Progress

Forrest D. Colburn
Arturo Cruz S.
(University of Texas)
A Somewhat Skewed View
Of the Central American Nation-States

Mark Twain's Own Autobiography:
The Chapters from
The North American Review
Michael J. Kiskis, Editor
(University of Wisconsin)
Tall Stories Dictated at
The End of Samuel Clemens' Life

To Suppress the Bible
Barbara Tuchman
[Reading]
The Bible in England in the 15th Century

The Anarchist Guidebook
Pete Winslow
[Poetry]
Two by the Great American
Poetic Anarchist

World War One
A Short History
Norman Stone
(Basic)
A Stylistically Astonishing View of WWI


Issue #210
www.ralphmag.org/GJ/indexGJ.html
Late Winter 2010-2011

The 3rd Ave. El --- Part III
DADA (Again)
The Airmen and
The Headhunters
The Key West Extension
Male Enhancement
Wicked River
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Favour (Wab)
3,5 Millions d'Euros
Letters We Never Finished Reading
With Tears in My Eyes
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Best Books of 2010
The Editors of Ralph
[List]
A Dozen of So New Titles
That Our Reviewers Found Worthy

Full of Grace*
Encountering Mary in
Faith, Art, and Life
Judith Dupré
(Random House)
A Hundred or So Pictures
And Essays on the Mother of Us All

Ezra Pound
New Selected Poems and Translations
(New Directions)
A Collection of Poems
From the First Imagist
And Original American Obscurantist

America in the Sixties*
John Robert Greene
(Syracuse University)
A Brief (and Charming) History
Of Our Salad Years

Please Take Me
Off the Guest List
Zachary Lipez
(Akashic Books)
A Cryptic Series of
Books-Within-Books
And Zebras

Proofiness
The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception
Charles Seife
(Viking)
Why "Damned Stastics"
Can --- and Do --- Lie

The World Of Yesterday*
Stefan Zweig
(Pushkin Press)
A Glorious (Personal)
History of Pre- and-
Post-WWI Europe

Nemesis
Philip Roth
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
A Flawed Portrait of 1944 Newark and the
Polio Epidemic

Dada East[G]
The Romanians of
Cabaret Voltaire

Tom Sandqvist
(MIT)
The Origins of Dada
With Some Looney Examples

Simba's Kapchorwa by Night
Stairway to Heaven
Douglas Cruickshank
[Articles]
Lively Adventures in Uganda

The Strange Troll
And the Sunbeam
Hjalmar Bergman
[Reading]
Dr. Phage Translates
Something Wonderful from Sweden

The Menudo of
A Cuchifrito Love Affair
Miguel Piñero
[Poem]
Love in the Ghetto
By a Son of Puerto Rico

Prof of Prof
Geoffrey Brock
[Poem
"Ozymandias" Without Teeth


Issue #211
www.ralphmag.org/GK/indexGK.html
Early Spring 2011

Walter Reed Hospital
Injured Vietnam Veterans
Animal Lovers
Cruelty to Animals
Hurricanes and Gold
(and Slaves)
Obscured Businesses
Letter Boxes
Water Closets
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Ships
United Nations
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Great Poems
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Great Poems
As Published in RALPH Over the Years

To Bury a Friend
Robert Boswell
[Reading]
A Selection from
The Heyday of the
Insensitive Bastards

Bertrand Russell and Aristocracy
George Steiner
[Reading]
George Steiner at
The New Yorker

The Bible Is God's Personal Letter to You
When the World Freezes to Death
Bradley Park
[Poem]
A Literary Review of the Bible
And the End of the World

Re:viewing Egypt
Image and Echo
Xavier Roy, Photographer
Gamal al-Ghitani
(American University in Cairo Press)
A Romantic View of Modern-Day Egypt

The Illumination
Kevin Brockmeier
(Pantheon)
The Day When All Our Pains Are (Painfully) Illuminated

Closing the Window
Steps to Living Porn Free
Tim Chester
(IVP)
A Fundamentalist's Take on
The Habit of Pornography

Invasion of the
Prostate Snatchers
No More Unnecessary Biopsies
Radical Treatment or
Loss of Sexual Potency

Ralph H. Blum
Mark Scholz, M. D.
(Other Press)
Some Clues on Preventing Unnecessary Surgery

A Return to Servitude
Maya Migration and
The Tourist Trade in Cancún
M. Bianet Castellanos
(University of Minnesota
An Anthropologist Views the Effects of
The Influx of Tourists on
Native Peoples of the Yucatan

Between Terror and Tourism
An Overland Journey across North Africa
Michael Mewshaw
(Counterpoint)
A Journey across North Africa ---
Fraught with Violence (and the Author's Own Demons)


Issue #212
www.ralphmag.org/GL/indexGL.html
Mid-Spring 2011

One Way Anchor Text Links
Sarbola
Viper's Tangle
What Does It Mean?
Blow Mould
Dead Neon
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Plan Crash
Pope Innocent
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]
Some Great Readings from Books Under Review
As Published in RALPH Over the Years

The Secret Life
of Bletchley Park
The WWII Codebreaking Center and
The Men and Women Who Worked There

Sinclair McKay
(Aurum)
A Portrait of the English Attempts to
Break the "Enigma" Code

Chernobyl*
The Hidden Legacy
Pierpaolo Mittica
(Trolley Books)
A Photographic Essay on the After-effects of
The Nuclear Plant that Exploded in 1986

Deserts[G]
The Living Drylands
Sara Oldfield
(MIT Press)
Photographs and Commentary on
The Arid Regions of the Earth

Shopping and Dancing in Shanghai
S. J. Perelman
[Reading]
The Pleasures (and Perils) of
Pre-WWII Travel

Freud's Mexico
Into the Wilds of Psychoanalysis
Rubén Gallo
(MIT Press)
The Outcroppings of Freud's
Influence South of the Border

Outside Looking In
Adventures of an Observer
Garry Wills
(Viking)
Tales from the Life of
The Noted Journalist

Green Green I Want You Green
Federico García-Lorca
[Poem]
A Ballad of Love and Death
In Spain

Hiroshima in the Morning
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
(The Feminist Press)
The Author in Research in Japan
(And Discovering Herself in the Process)

Plasticman
The Zaporka
Dr. Phage
[Articles]
Reports on Two New Idols
From the Past

The Rise and Fall of Hitler
Stefan Zweig
[Reading]
The Early History of Nazis in Austria

There's a Road to Everywhere
Except Where You Came From
Bryan Charles
(Open City Books)
Bumming Around in New York
(And an Eyewitness to the Fall of the Towers)

Arms of the Snake
Christine Boyka Kluge
[Poem]
Contemporary American Poetry

Enlightening the World
The Creation of the Statue of Liberty
Yasmin Sabina Khan
(Cornell University Press)
A History of the Dream of
And Construction of the Beacon of Liberty

Stone in a Landslide*
Maria Barbal
(Peirene Press)
A Story of Growing up Poor in Central Europe


Issue #213
www.ralphmag.org/GM/indexGM.html
Late Spring 2011

Morley Baer
Hirotada Ototake
Bookmarks for Belgium
I Never Forget You
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Wicked Rebels
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Abbott Awaits*
Chris Bachelder
(Louisiana State University Press)
How to Raise a Two-Year-Old
And How She May Raise You

Field Note:
Alamogordo --- February 2004
Peter C. van Wyck
[Reading]
A Visit to the Original Site Of the Original Bomb

Caribou
Peter C. van Wyck
[Reading]
Learning How to Talk with the Dene
While They Learn How to
Not Talk with You

All Eyes
A Memoir of Deafness
Bainy B. Cyrus
(Bainy B. Cyrus)
Growing Up in the World of
Those Who Think They Can Hear

Harare North
Brian Chikwava
(Vintage/Random House)
How to Survive
As an Immigrant from Africa
In the Council Flats in England

The Highway of the Atom*
Peter C. van Wyck
(McGill-Queen's University Press)
An Eye-Opening Account
Of Those Who (Unwittingly)
Gave Us Our First Atom Bombs

The Ring Is Closed
Knut Hamsun
(Souvenir Press)
The First Existential Novel
From Twentieth Century Norway

Nemesis
Philip Roth
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
A Reworking of Our Earlier
Review of Roth's Latest

Otherwise Elsewhere
David Rivard
(Graywolf)
Writings of One of Contemporary
America's Most Startling Poets

Lightning With Stag In Its Glare
David Rivard
[Poem]
Stars and Wood-Peckers

Children's Vomit
Chris Bachelder
[Reading]
How to Deal with the
Outpourings of a Two-Year-Old

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

John Baxter
(Arum Books)
Life (and Death) in
A Prisoner Camp 1942 - 1945

Andy Warhol
And the Can that
Sold the World

Gary Indiana
(Basic Books)
A Brief (and Troubled)
Work about a Troubled Artist

White Waters and Black[G]
Gordon MacCreagh
(University of Chicago)
One of the First Original
Nightmare Journeys into Other Worlds


Issue #214
www.ralphmag.org/GN/indexGN.html
Early Summer 2011

Porgies
Headpots of Arkansas
James Low
Raymundo Sanchez
Have the Desire
Chrome Hairpin Table
Letters We Never Finished Reading
The Race of Life
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Fifteen Great Books
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Our Favorite Titles
From the First Six
Months of 2011

The Quotable Krishnamurti
Robert Epstein, Editor
(Quest Books)
Six Hundred Short Quotes from
The Speeches of the Late Master

The Last Muster
Images of
The Revolutionary War Generation

Maureen Taylor
(Kent State University Press)
Seventy Photographs of Those Who
Survived America's First Civil War

Little Did I Know
Excerpts from Memory
Stanley Cavell
(Stanford)
The Autobiography of a Self-made
Musician and Philosopher

The John Lardner Reader
A Press Box Legend's
Classic Sportswriting

John Schulian, Editor
(Bison Books)
Some of the Great Essays from
A Master of the Sports Genre

Pluto
Sentinel of the
Outer Solar System

Barrie W. Jones
(Cambridge University Press)
The Now-No-Longer Planet
Reviewed and Remembered

Train Dreams*
Denis Johnson
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
A Sweet Tale of
Growing Up (and Surviving)
In Idaho Country

Combat Trauma
A Personal Look at
Long-Term Consequences

James D. Johnson
(Rowman & Litlefield)
Sixteen Veterans Recall
Their Bouts with PTSD

Visitation*
Jenny Erpenbeck
(New Directions)
A Novel about Life in a House
In the Brandenburg Mountains

My Fine Feathered Friend[G]
William Grimes
(North Point)
A Chicken Gets Loose in Astoria
And Becomes a Folk Hero

Pets
J. Gallant
L. Milam
[Article]
How Americans Treat
And Are Treated by Their Pets

Now Pitching for Bartletts
John Lardner
[Reading]
The Origin of the Great Philosophical Mot
"I Shudda Stood in Bed"

An Early Flight
Denis Johnson
[Reading]
In Which Our Hero
Goes on a Ride
in a Scary Bi-Plane

Bottom
Arthur Rimbaud
[Poetry]
John Ashbery's Translation

The Bad Sonnet
Ronald Wallace
[Poem]
Great Poems of the Past


Issue #215
www.ralphmag.org/GO/indexGO.html
Mid-Summer 2011

H. L. Mencken
Daguerrotypes
Dogwalkers
Cryptic Letters of the Month Diploma
Life in Thailand
Pat Robertson
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH
Twelve Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Readers' Favorites

Jack London
Photographer
Jeanne Campbell Reesman et al, Editors
(University of Georgia Press)
A Selection of 200 of the
Photographs from the early
20th Century writer
Accidental Historian

Tales of Trash and Treasure
Monte Akers
(Texas Tech University Press)
A Civil War Buff Tells Us More than We
Might Want to Know about "Re-enactments"

Llano Estacado*
An Island in the Sky
Stephen Bogener,
William Tydeman, Editors
(Texas Tech University Press)
A Visit (with Exquisite Photographs)
To One of the Most Barren Places on Earth

from unwritten histories*
Eugenijus Ališanka
(Host)
Abstract Expressionistic Poetry
From Lithuania

Departures
Memoirs
Paul Zweig
(Other Books)
Seduced by the French
Language, Culture, and Women

Deaf in DC
A Memoir
Madan Vasishta
(Gallaudet University Press)
From India to Gallaudet
(Through Simple Persistence)

Aaaaw to Zzzzzd
The Words of Birds
North America, Britain, and Northern Europe
John Bevis
(MIT)
The Songs of some 1200 Birds

Lester Higata's 20th Century*
Stories
Barbara Hamby
(University of Iowa)
Twelve Great Stories from Hawai'i

Jeff Wall:
Picture for Women
David Campany
(Afterall Books)
A Tribute to a Bizarre
Some Might Say Misguided Artist

Frontiers of Heaven[G]
A Journey to
The End of China

Stanley Stewart
(Lyons Press)
A Wonderful Journey
Through All of China

Geolocating Tweets
Dr. Phage
[Article]
A Journey Through the Mysteries
Of the Electronic Age

One Day After Saturday
Gabriel García Márquez
[Reading]
The Mass with Father Anthony Isabel

The Tiger
John Vaillant
[Reading]
The Terror and the
Wonder of the Siberian Amur Tiger

not exactly a poem
Eugenijus Ališanka
[Poem]
A Poem about
Not a Poem

star wars
Eugenijus Ališanka
[Poem]
life in the full moon
is a flood seas of blood
mountains of chocolate


Issue #216
www.ralphmag.org/GP/indexGP.html
Late Summer 2011

Pen & Ink Press
Driving Instructors at RALPH
Animal Lovers
The Rejection Slip Blues
Outdated RALPH
Kurt Vonnegut, A Life
Are You DEAD?
Letters We Never Finished Reading
600 million U.S Dollars in Iraq
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Hits from 2001
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Books Reviewed
in RALPH Ten Years Ago

Baghdad Sketches*
Journeys through Iraq
Freya Stark
(Tauris Parke Paperback)
A Woman's Lone Trips
through The Middle East ---
The Early 20th Century

The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
(Recorded Books)
The 1960s Manual on a College Girl's Life
on the Way to a Slow Suicide

The Bestiary*
Or, Procession of Orpheus
Guillaume Apollinaire
X. J. Kennedy, Translator
(Johns Hopkins University Press)
Twenty-Six Animals
Remembered by the Contemporary Poet

Crossing with the Virgin
Stories from the Migrant Trail
Kathryn Ferguson, Norma A. Price, Ted Parks
(University of Arizona Press)
Thirty-Two Essays on Trying to
Save Lives on the Arizona-Mexico Border

The Colossus, Daddy
Sylvia Plath
[Poems]
Two Great Poems by a Great Poet

Death is Not an Option
Suzanne Rivecca
(Norton)
Short Stories about Teachers,
Social Workers and Nuns

Transformers 3:
Dark of the Moon
Trollhunter

Dr. Phage
[Film Review]
Monsters Who Return
Disguised as Our Cars

Reading with the Stars
A Celebration of Books and Libraries
Leonard Kniffel
(Skyhorse/ALA)
Fourteen "Stars" Interviewed
about the Worth of Libraries

Woodcraft Manual

Christopher Bursk
[Poem]
His Father Remembered

Smells, Samarra
Freya Stark
[Reading]
Remembering Iraq and Kuwait from Eighty Years Ago

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand
Masterworks from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Malcolm Daniel
[Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Yale University Press]
Three Great American
Photographers and their
Place in History

Lightning
Jean Echenoz
(The New Press)
A Thinly Disguised Biography
of the Eccentric Inventor, Nikola Tesla

The Tiger*
A True Story of Vengence and Survival
John Vaillant
(Vintage Books)
The Amur Tiger of Siberia
Who Occasionally Feeds on People

Bound and Gagged[G]
Pornography and the Politics
of Fantasy In America

Laura Kipnis
(Duke University Press)
The Rhyme and the Reason of
Lurid Books and Movies

The Truth about Marie*
Jean-Philippe Toussaint
(Dalkey Archive)
An Independent Woman,
Her Two Lovers, and
A Very Independent Horse


Issue #217
www.ralphmag.org/GQ/indexGQ.html
Early Fall 2011

Students on Drugs
Down Syndrome and
Early Childhood Stimulation Programs
Use of the Word "Hopefully"
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Your Loving and Caring Angel
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Editors Hits for Tomorrow
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some of the Books
Proposed for Our
Upcoming Anthology

Barrio Boy*
40th Anniversary Edition
Ernesto Galarza
(University of Notre Dame Press)
Memories of Crossing the Border
In the Early Years of the Century

The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin
Artistry in Motion
Dan Kamin
(Scarecrow Press)
Rare Insight into the Films and
Personal Life of Charlie Chaplin

Daughters of the Revolution
A Novel
Carolyn Cooke
(Knopf)
A Collection of
Balmy Stories about the
Balmy Residents of a New England
College Town

The Drowned
Carsten Jensen
[Reading]
Young Danish Sailors off to the
Islands of Paradise
Otherwise Known as the Human Condition

Selected Essays and Reviews
Geoff Dyer
(Graywolf Press)
A Fat Volume of Essays on
Writers, Photographers, Morocco and
The Best Doughnut in the World

History Thieves
Zinovy Zinik
(Seagull Books)
A Short Autobiographical Sketch
About Leaving Russia, Going to
Israel, and Thinking about a Creative Worm

Homo Habilis:
The Tool-Maker
Kevin Ducey
[Poem]
What Happened When Angels Appeared
To Contemplate Our Toolbits

A Lamp in the Darkness
Illuminating the Path through Difficult Times
Jack Kornfield
(Sounds True)
A Series of Guided Meditations
Connected to the Earth

Marshall McLuhan
You Know Nothing of My Work!
Douglas Coupland
(Atlas & Co.)
A Brief, Highly Subjective
Life of the Media Master

Capital of the World
A Portrait of New York City
In the Roaring Twenties

David Wallace
(Lyons Press)
A Highly Subjective
(And Quite Racy)
View of Manhattan from
Nighty Years Ago

Say Butterfly
Ernesto Galarza
[Reading]
Learning to be Part of the
USA in 1900s Sacramento

Ode to My Socks
Pablo Neruda
Translated by W. C. Williams
[Poem]
The Comfort of a Newly Knitted
And Quite Warm Pair of Socks

Sometimes a Great Notion*
Ken Kesey
(Recorded Books)
The Wonderful Story of
The Epic Lives of a
Logging Family in Oregon


Issue #218
www.ralphmag.org/GR/indexGR.html
Mid-Fall 2011

A Radio/Television Theory
of the American Mind
Surviving
Blow Molds
Amos Oz
I am a girl
Letters We Never Finished Reading
About to End the Race
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

More Editors Hits for Tomorrow
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Some More Books
Proposed for our
Upcoming Anthology

Arthritis, Gin, Vinegar,
Raisins and MSM
Sharon Gardner
[Reading]
Some New and Traditional
Cures for Arthritis

The Brothers Ashkenazi
A Novel
I. J. Singer
(Other Books)
An Epic Tale of Jewish Families
In Lodz, Poland ---
100 Years Ago

Felice Beato
A Photographer on
The Eastern Road
Anne Lacoste
Fred Ritchin, Editors
(Getty Museum)
One of the
Early Pioneers in War Photography

Learn World Calligraphy*
Discover African, Arabic, Chinese, Ethiopic, Greek,
Hebrew, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian,
Russian, Thai, Tibetan Calligraphy, and Beyond

Margaret Shepherd
(Watson Guptill)
An Elegant Presentation of the Art of
Over Twenty Calligraphies of the World

Chrismas
Family Chronometer
András Gerevoch
[Poems]
Contemporary Hungarian Poetry

Green Clean
The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning
Your House

Linda Mason Hunter
Mikki Halpin
(Melcher Media)
The Natural Way to Defeat
A "Sick House"

Mummy on the Doorstep
Christine Boyka Kluge
[Poem]
Contemporary (Spooky) American Poetry

The Oriental Wife
A Novel
Evelyn Toynton
(Other Books)
The Story of Louisa
A Refugee with a Tumor

In the Shadow of Freedom
The Politics of Slavery
In the National Capital

Paul Finkleman
Donald R. Kennon, Editors
(Ohio University Press)
Ten Essays on the Effect of Slavery
Smack-Dab in Washington, D.C.
1830 - 1861

The Collywobbles
C. A. Amantea
[Article]
Stomach Aches (and Antibiotics)
in the Early Twenty-First Century

Unlikely Friendships
Forty-Seven Remarkable Stories
From the Animal Kingdom

Jennifer S. Holland
(Workman Publishing)
Odd Animal Pairings Pictured


Issue #219
www.ralphmag.org/GS/indexGS.html
Late Fall 2011

Virgin of Juquila
Breathing in, Dust
Calligraphy
Cryptic Letters of the Month
To Read From You
Custom Women's Shoes
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Pastor James Ologbegbekilor
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Twelve Stars from 2011
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Best Books
(So Far)
From this Rapidly
Dwindling Year

Edmund Yaghjian
A Retrospective
Paul Matheny,
Sharon Campbell
(South Carolina State Museum)
Several Dozen (Interesting!) Paintings
From this Painter of South Carolina

The Forgotten Waltz
A Novel
Anne Enright
(Norton)
Love (and Semi-Sordid)
Adultery from Recent Ireland

Shooting from the Hip
Photographs and Essays
J. Don Cook
(University of Oklahoma)
Sad Indians and Happy Children
From the Plains of Oklahoma

The Undertaker's Daughter
Toi Derricotte
(University of Pittsburgh
Press)
Bitter (and Loving) Poetry
About a Scary Father

Arizona
A Celebration of
The Grand Canyon State

Jim Turner
(Gibbs Smith)
Many Pictures (And A Few Platitudes about
The 48th State

Plugged

Eoin Colfer
(Overlook) A Detective Novel
About Murder in the Lowlands of New Jersey

The Pocho Society
Field Guide to L. A.
Monuments and Murals of
Erased and Invisible Histories

Sandra de la Loza
(University of Washington)
Seven or Eight Memorable Sites
That Have Not Been Memorialized

The Necessity of Certain Behaviors*
Shannon Cain
(University of Pittsburgh) Life Studies on Some Wonderful
(Terrible) Families

Memoirs of a Dwarf[G]
At the Sun King's Court
Paul Weidner
(University of Wisconsin/ Terrace Books)
Some Fascinating Tales
From the Days (and Nights)
Of Louis XIV

The Time Travellers
Jon Gallant
[Article]
"Conservatives" Being Co-opted
By "Radicals"

Letter from Breslau Prison
Rosa Luxemburg
[Reading]
The Darkness of Night in Prison
Contrasted with the Lightness of Being

On Tending a Drunker Mother
Shannon Cain
[Reading]
When your Mother Comes
To Town on a Bender

In Memoriam
A. R. Ammons
[Poem]
The Sun in Our Lives

It's Not Armageddon
Cheryl Dumesnil
[Poem]
A Fire in the Mountain


Issue #220
www.ralphmag.org/GT/indexGT.html
Early Winter 2011

The Somme, The Coward
Hugh Cecil
Heathen and the Bible
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Letter from Timothy F. Geithner
PET stretch blow moulding
Letters We Never Finished Reading
I have just two days to leave
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

  Twelve Hits
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Reviews, Articles, Poems and Readings
Called Up Most Often at Our Server

The Anatomy of Addiction*
Sigmund Freud, William Halstead,
And the Miracle Drug Cocaine
Howard Markel

(Pantheon)
Revelations about Cocaine Addiction
And Two 20th Century
Medical Pioneers

Bernard Maybeck*
Architect of Elegance
Mark Anthony Wilson
(Gibbs Smith)
The Great California Architect
Pictured and Described

Dog Days
A Year in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile
Dave Ihlenfeld
(Union Square Press)
A Year of Misery Driving About in a
Hot Frankfurter

As If We Were Prey

Michael Delp (Wayne State University Press)
Eight Stories from the Heartland

New Stories from the Midwest
Jason Lee Brown,
Jay Prefontaine,
Editors
(Ohio University/Swallow)
Twenty Stories, Including Ones by
Chris Leslie Hynan, Carol K. Howell,
Kim Brooks and James Magruder

My Dyslexia
Philip Schultz
(Norton)
The Poet Discovers
(At Fifty-Eight!)
Why He Had Trouble Reading

Call Me When You Land*
Michael Schiavone
(The Permanent Press)
A Single Mother
Raising a Fifteen-Year-Old Boy

Kafka's Leopards
Moacyr Scliar
(Texas Tech University Press)
Going to Prague
On a Bet and
Meeting K. (in Person)

The Somme
The Coward[G]
A. D. Gristwood (South Carolina)
Two Books on Trench Warfare
By an Unknown English Writer

The High Halloween Days
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Halloween in a Kosher (Almost)
Group Home

Field Rations
Mike Ervin
[Reading]
Detail on Your Standard Food
During a Demonstration for ADAPT

You Can't ChopYour Mama
Up in Massachusetts
(Not Even If You're Tired
Of Her Cuisine)
Michael Brown
[Poem] Restrictions on Matricide
In New England

Shiva Goes Surfing
Off Newfoundland
Francis S. Pickens
[Poem]
Falling in Love
In Northern Waters


Issue #221
www.ralphmag.org/GU/indexGU.html
Mid-Winter 2011 - 2012

Ford Foundation Grant
Timothy --- or, Notes of an Abject Reptile
Georges Lemaitre
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Dog Walkers
Hello, Honey
Rubber Belts
Letters We Never Finished Reading
United Nations Compensation
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Why Oh Why?
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
Our Favorite
Paradoxes-of-the-Month

And So It Goes
Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
Charles J. Shields
(Henry Holt)
The Life of the Author of
Slaughterhouse Five

The Centaur in the Garden*
Moacyr Scliar
(Texas Tech University)
Growing Up with a Half-a-
Horse Body in Brazil

The Kress Collection
At the Denver Art Museum
Angelica Daneo
(University of Oklahoma)
A Hundred Paintings, Panels, Drawings
And Sculptures from the Pre-Renaissance

Dumb Luck
Lesley Choyce
(Red Deer)
A Lottery Ticket for
$3,000,000 --- and How It Screws You Up

[Sic]: A Memoir*
Joshua Cody
(Norton)
Getting Cancer in Mid-Life
And Surviving

Mending
New and Selected Stories
Sallie Bingham
(Sarabande)
Stories on Bickering and
June/December Love

The Other Walk:
Essays
Sven Birkerts
(Graywolf Press)
Essays on Writing and
Children and Writing and
Ladders and Writing

The Spiritual Doorway To the Brain
A Neurologist's Search For the God Experience
Kevin Nelson
(Dutton)
Out-of-Body and
Near-Death Experiences and
Scientific Explanations to
Shoo Them All Away

The Past from Above[G]
Aerial Photographs of
Archaeological Sites

Georg Gerster
Charlotte Trümpler, Editors
(The J. Paul Getty Museum)
250 Archeological Sites
As Photographed from Above

The Concert-Going Life
Dr. Phage
[Article]
How to Sneak into
The Rich Seats from
The Aerie

A Vision Of Dying
Joshue Cody
[Reading]
The Vision from
Your Death-Bed

Self Diagnosis and Treatment
Tremors
Andrea Cohen
[Poems]
Surviving Earthquakes
And Marriage

At Lolita's Cafe
Carlos Amantea
[Reading]
Hanging Out in a Low-Life Bar
On the Coast of Mexico


Issue #222
www.ralphmag.org/GV/indexGV.html
Late Winter 2011 - 2012

Cihuly
Florida's Ocean Railroad to Key West
Long Way Back to the River Kwai
If You Hear Bells
Get Your Ears Checked
Your Diplomat Has Arrive
Letters We Never Finished Reading
MULTINATIONAL OIL COMPANY EXXON
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Ten Years Ago
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Look at Reviews, Poems and Readings
from the Year 2002

A Flotilla of Boobs
Ralph Magazine
[List]
One of the Dying Wheezes
From the Other RALPH

Soldiers of the White Sun
The Chinese Army at War 1931 - 1949
Philip Jowett
(Schiffer)
Photographs from the Sino-Japanese War

Changing Genres
Dean Young
[Poem]
Looking for a Russian
Novel Life

Great Journeys
The World's Most Spectacular Routes
Andrew Bain, et al.
Editors
(Lonely Planet Travel)
Following Seventy or So
Routes in Travel Around the World

A Thousand Lives
The Untold Story of Hope,
Deception, and Survival at Jonestown

Julia Scheeres
(Free Press)
A Look at the Early --- and Final ---
Days of Jim Jones Temple

Kohlrabi Soup
Floyd Skloot
[Reading]
The Last Days of Ike
A Holocaust Victim

Cream of Kohlrabi*
Stories
Floyd Skloot
(Tupelo Press)
A Variety of Stories, Including
Life in a Nursing Home for
Survivors of the Holocaust

Un Oiseau Chante
Guillaume Apollinaire
Donald Revell, Translator
(Wesleyan University Press)
Songs of the Birds in the
Trenches of World War I

Smart Ass Cripple
Mike Ervin
(Lulu)
Stories about the Perils of
Being Disabled in a World
Of "Verts" (Verticals)

On the Ground
An illustrated Anecdotal History
Of the Sixties Underground Press
In the U. S.

Sean Stewart
(PM Press)
Interviews with the Founders of
Dozens of "Underground" Newspapers

Watergate
A Novel
Thomas Mallon
(Random)
A Fictinal Account of the Famous
Break-In and Cover-Up from 1972ff

A Winter in Arabia*
A Journey through Yemen
Freya Stark
(Tauris Parke)
Six Months in One of
The Most Barren Spots on Earth
During the Early 1930s


Issue #223
www.ralphmag.org/GW/indexGW.html
Early Spring 2012

Books on Disability
Stone Houses
Laundry Trucks
Letters We Never Finished Reading
From Bed to Worse in Libya
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Testy Emails
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Sample of the Sassiest Emails
Sent to this Magazine over
The Last Fifteen Years

Silence*
50th Anniversary Edition
John Cage
Kyle Gann, Editor
(Wesleyan)
Cage's Great Study of Music,
Art, Zen, and the Lack (and Excess)
of Sound --- from 1960

That's Disgusting
Unraveling the Mysteries Of Repulsion
Rachel Herz
(Norton)
Fifty or So Absolutely
Repulsive Things to Make You
Feel Like Throwing Up

Kentucky Derby
Poems
Andrea Cohen
(salmonpoetry)
Fascinating Bits on Jell-O,
Train Tickets, and
the Iowa State Fair Butter Carvings

A History of My Body
A Novel
Sharon Heath
(Genoa House)
The Unsettling Tale of
a Thirteen-Year-Old Autistic (and Genius)

James Riely Gordon
His Courthouses and
Other Public Architecture

Chris Meister
(Texas Tech University Press)
Twenty-One Georgeous Turn-of-the-Century
Texas County Courthouses

Awake in the World
Teachings from Yoga and
Buddhism for Living
An Engaged Life

Michael Stone
(Shambhala)
Twenty Lectures on
a Proposed New and
Engaged Life of a Yogin

Children in Reindeer Woods*
Kristín Ómarsdóttir
Lytton Smith, Translator
(Open Letter)
An Enchanted (and Enchanting) Tale
of a Soldier/Farmer and
His Young Friend Billie

Reticence
Jean-Philippe Toussaint John Lambert, Translator
(Dalkey Archive)
Another of those Neo-Existentialst
Stories of Men Who Don't React

The Last Hundred Days[B]
Patrick McGuiness
(Seren)
The Dying Days of the Dictator
Ceausescu of Romania

Worm: [B]The First Digital World War
Mark Bowden
(Atlantic Monthly)
The Threat Posed by a Great
Computer Worm Called Conficker

The Brick Murder:[B]
A Tragedy
Kurt Jose Ayau
(Livingston Press/University of West Alabama)
Four Great (and
Several Not-So-Great)
Short Stories

A Queen's Journey[B]
James D. Houston
(Heyday)
Queen Lili'uokalani of Hawai'i Tries
to Save Her Country

Margaret Sanger:[B]
A Life of Passion
Jean H Baker
(Hill & Wang)
The Woman Who Made
Birth Control (and
Planned Parenthood) Possible

It Calls You Back:[B]
An Odyssey Through Love,
Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing

Luis J Rodríguez
(Touchstone)
A Chicano Journalist Survives the Ghetto

Patagonia:[G] Land of Giants
Alejandro Winograd Dan Newland, Translator
(Terra Australis, Editorial)
A Romantic Look at the World
At the End of the World

The Rooster In the Wristwatch[G]
Dr. J. Phage
[Article]
How to Tame those Electronic Beasts
That Are Taking Over Our Lives

The Starting Train
V. Nabokov
[Reading]
The Train Begins Moving

Suicide & Yoga
Michael Stone
[Reading]
A Different Way to
Treat the Suicidal Patient

The World Is in Pencil,
The Hindenberg
Todd Boss
[Poems]
Two Poems about Love
And a Labor of Love

Saturn Rings about
The Alambra
C. K. Swann
[Poem]
A Poem about
Love in Spain


Issue #223
www.ralphmag.org/GW/indexGW.html
Early Spring 2012

Books on Disability
Stone Houses
Laundry Trucks
Letters We Never Finished Reading
From Bed to Worse in Libya
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH

Testy Emails
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
A Sample of the Sassiest Emails
Sent to this Magazine over
The Last Fifteen Years

Silence*
50th Anniversary Edition
John Cage
Kyle Gann, Editor
(Wesleyan)
Cage's Great Study of Music,
Art, Zen, and the Lack (and Excess)
of Sound --- from 1960

That's Disgusting
Unraveling the Mysteries Of Repulsion
Rachel Herz
(Norton)
Fifty or So Absolutely
Repulsive Things to Make You
Feel Like Throwing Up

Kentucky Derby
Poems
Andrea Cohen
(salmonpoetry)
Fascinating Bits on Jell-O,
Train Tickets, and
the Iowa State Fair Butter Carvings

A History of My Body
A Novel
Sharon Heath
(Genoa House)
The Unsettling Tale of
a Thirteen-Year-Old Autistic (and Genius)

James Riely Gordon
His Courthouses and
Other Public Architecture

Chris Meister
(Texas Tech University Press)
Twenty-One Georgeous Turn-of-the-Century
Texas County Courthouses

Awake in the World
Teachings from Yoga and
Buddhism for Living
An Engaged Life

Michael Stone
(Shambhala)
Twenty Lectures on
a Proposed New and
Engaged Life of a Yogin

Children in Reindeer Woods*
Kristín Ómarsdóttir
Lytton Smith, Translator
(Open Letter)
An Enchanted (and Enchanting) Tale
of a Soldier/Farmer and
His Young Friend Billie

Reticence
Jean-Philippe Toussaint
John Lambert, Translator
(Dalkey Archive)
Another of those Neo-Existentialst
Stories of Men Who Don't React

The Last Hundred Days[B]
Patrick McGuiness
(Seren)
The Dying Days of the Dictator
Ceausescu of Romania

Worm: [B]The First Digital World War
Mark Bowden
(Atlantic Monthly)
The Threat Posed by
A Great Computer Worm
Called Conficker

The Brick Murder:[B]
A Tragedy
Kurt Jose Ayau
(Livingston Press/Univ. of W. Alabama)
Four Great (and
Several Not-So-Great)
Short Stories

A Queen's Journey[B]
James D. Houston
(Heyday)
Queen Lili'uokalani of Hawai'i Tries
to Save Her Country

Margaret Sanger:[B]
A Life of Passion
Jean H Baker
(Hill & Wang)
The Woman Who Made
Birth Control (and
Planned Parenthood) Possible

It Calls You Back:[B]
An Odyssey Through Love,
Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing

Luis J Rodríguez
(Touchstone)
A Chicano Journalist Survives the Ghetto

Patagonia:[G] Land of Giants
Alejandro Winograd
Dan Newland, Translator
(Terra Australis, Editorial)
A Romantic Look at
the World at the End of the World

The Rooster In the Wristwatch[G]
Dr. J. Phage
[Article]
How to Tame those
Electronic Beasts
That Are Taking Over Our Lives

The Starting Train
V. Nabokov
[Reading]
The Train Begins Moving

Suicide & Yoga
Michael Stone
[Reading]
A Different Way to
Treat the Suicidal Patient

The World Is in Pencil,
The Hindenberg
Todd Boss
[Poems]
Two Poems about Love
And a Labor of Love

Saturn Rings about
The Alambra
C. K. Swann
[Poem]
A Poem about
Love in Spain


Issue #224
www.ralphmag.org/GX/indexGX.html
Mid-Spring 2012

Tesla
Bird of Dawning
Apt. 301
Stone-inscriptions with
the Thulth Style of Script
Your Time on Me
Bad Uncles
The Price of Pleasure
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Bibles for Souls
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

Ten Stars
The Editors of RALPH
[List]
The Best Books from
the Last Few Months

Barn Owl
David Chandler
(Firefly Books)
Disgusting Habits of
Some Beautiful Night Birds

Scenery, Curiosities, and Stupendous Rocks
William Quesenbury's Overland
Sketches 1850 - 1851

David Royce Murphy
(University of Oklahoma Press)
Drawings from 150 Years Age
By a Certified Scoundrel

Fup*
Jim Dodge
(Heyday)
Droll Happenings of a 99-Year-Old Drunk
His Grandson, and their Rabbit

History of a Pleasure Seeker
Richard Mason
(Alfred A. Knopf)
Poor Boy Moves in with Rich Family
and Everyone is Traduced (if not Seduced)

Beside the Sea
Véronique Olmi
(Peirene)
A Mother, Her Two Small Boys,
the Sea, and Madness

Comet Scar
James Harms
(Carnegie Mellon)
Poems about Cary Grant, Red Foxx,
Bill Murray, and Losing Your Son

Lying in Bed
Polly Samson
(Virago)
Several Stories about Motherhood,
Old Gardners, and Surprises
For Your Old Husband's New Wife

Solace
In So Many Words
Ellen Wade Beals
(Weighed Words)
Almost Too Many Words about
Loss, and Strength in Loss

Married But Looking
Daniel S. Libman
(Livingston Press /
University of West Alabama)
More Short Stories ---
Including a Knock-Out about
The Hills of Guatemala

Pushing the Limits:[G]
New Adventures in Engineering
Henry Petroski
(Knopf)
Some Doubtful Triumphs
In Modern International Engineering

Appeasing Prince Charles
Mike Ervin
(Article)
Disabled Man Finds
Dope-Smoker (and Son) to Care For Him

Lunch in Romania, 1989
Patrick McGuiness
[Reading]
Going Out with a Top Operative
In the Last Days of Ceausescu

The Angel of Death
Stanley Elkin
[Reading]
The Last Hours of An Innocent in a Liquor Store

We Started Home,
My Son and I
James Harms
[Poem]
A Short Visit with
A Son (Now Lost)

[G] = Great Review of the Past
* = A book we believe to be of special merit


Issue #224
www.ralphmag.org/GX/indexGX.html
Mid-Spring 2012

Apt. 301
Stone-inscriptions with
the Thulth Style of Script
Your Time on Me
Bad Uncles
The Price of Pleasure
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Bibles for Souls
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and Letters to RALPH

Ten Stars
The Editors of RALPH
[LIST]
The Best Books from
the Last Few Months

Barn Owl
David Chandler
(Firefly Books)
Disgusting Habits of
Some Beautiful Night Birds

Scenery, Curiosities, and
Stupendous Rocks
William Quesenbury's Overland Sketches 1850 - 1851
David Royce Murphy
(University of Oklahoma Press)
Drawings from 150 Years Age
By a Certified Scoundrel

Fup*
Jim Dodge
(Heyday)
Droll Happenings of a 99-Year-Old Drunk
His Grandson, and their Rabbit

History of a Pleasure Seeker
Richard Mason
(Alfred A. Knopf)
Poor Boy Moves in with Rich Family
and Everyone is Traduced (if not Seduced)

Beside the Sea
Véronique Olmi
(Peirene)
A Mother, Her Two Small Boys,
the Sea, and Madness

Comet Scar
James Harms
(Carnegie Mellon)
Poems about Cary Grant, Red Foxx,
Bill Murray, and Losing Your Son

Lying in Bed
Polly Samson
(Virago)
Several Stories about Motherhood,
Old Gardners, and Surprises
For Your Old Husband's New Wife

Solace In So Many Words
Ellen Wade Beals
(Weighed Words)
Almost Too Many Words about
Loss, and Strength in Loss

Married But Looking
Daniel S. Libman
(Livingston Press /
University of West Alabama)
More Short Stories --- Including a Knock-Out about
The Hills of Guatemala

Pushing the Limits:[G]
New Adventures in Engineering
Henry Petroski
(Knopf)
Some Doubtful Triumphs
In Modern International Engineering

Appeasing Prince Charles
Mike Ervin
(Article)
Disabled Man Finds
Dope-Smoker (and Son) to Care For Him

Lunch in Romania, 1989
Patrick McGuiness
[Reading]
Going Out with a Top Operative
In the Last Days of Ceausescu

The Angel of Death
Stanley Elkin
[Reading]
The Last Hours of
An Innocent in a Liquor Store

We Started Home, My Son and I
James Harms
[Poem]
A Short Visit with
A Son (Now Lost)

[G] = Great Review of the Past
* = A book we believe to be of special merit


Issue #225
www.ralphmag.org/GY/indexGY.html
Late-Spring 2012

The Mythic Death of Carlos Amantea
Multiple Personality Disorder
Married but Looking
Dan Libman
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Windmills and Birds
Attendant Beds
Letters We Never Finished Reading
a rainfall of information
The Readers of RALPH
[Letters]
Correspondence with the Magazine
Concerning Previous
Reviews, Articles,
Poems, Readings, and
Letters to RALPH

The Vagabond's Breakfast*
Richard Gwyn
(Alcemi)
A Derelict Raving through Europe

Hidden Seminoles
Julian Dimock's Historic Florida Photographs
Jerald T. Milanich
Nina J. Root
(University Press of Florida)
Four Years of Photographs from
The Early Years of the
Twentieth Century

Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner
William Faulkner
(Modern Library)
Sixteen Stories from Faulkner's Early Days

The Plots against the President
FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and
the Rise of the American Right

Sally Denton
(Bloomsbury)
Plots --- Yes, But Only Two
And They Were Minor

The FSG Book of
Twentieth-Century
Latin American Poetry
An Anthology
Ilan Stavans, Editor
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
160 Poems --- Mostly
Rather Bland

Asylum on the Hill
History of a
Healing Landscape

Katherine Ziff
(Ohio University Press)
One of the Great Post Civil
War Buildings for the Mad

1222
A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel
Anne Holt
(Scribner)
A Rather Haphazard Account of
A Murderer on the Loose
In an Idylic Mountain Retreat

Building One Fire
Art + World View in
Cherokee Life

Chadwick Corntassel Smith
Rennard Benny
Smith Strickland
(Cherokee Nation
University of Oklahoma)
More than 200 Gorgeous
Works of Art from
Pre- and Post-"Resettlement"

Joining the Resistance
Carol Gilligan
(Polity)
How Girls are Coopted,
Pulled into the System of Patriarchy

God Breaketh Not
All Men's Hearts Alike
New & Later Collected Poems
Stanley Moss
(Seven Stories Press)
Over 300 Poems from the
Realist/Modernist

An Old Wife's Tale[G]
My Seven Decades
In Love and War

Midge Decter
(Regan/Harper/Collins)
The War is Pretty Well Expressed;
The Love Is Almost Completely Hidden

Classic K:
Jan Ladislav Dussek and François-Joseph Gossec
Dr. Phage
[Article]
Some Thoughts about the New
Forms of Classical Background Music

The Great Land Giveaway
C. A. Amantea
[Article]
How Zoning and Planning Commisions
Have Sucked Our Cities Dry

Jimson Weed
Richard Gwyn
[Reading]
A Few Days in the Arms
Of a Super Hallucinogen

The Fiction of Oil Pollution
James Hamilton-Paterson
[Reading]
How the Earth Will
Heal Itself of those Pesky Spills

The Dead Horse
Cecilia Meireles
[Poem]
Romance of the Dead Horse On the Hill

Nursing Home Doctors
Richard M. Berlin
[Poem]
An Imaginary Medico
In an Imaginary Clinic