Keyes’s books have dealt with topics in popular culture such as risk-taking, time pressure, loneliness, honesty, and human height.
Keyes has also written numerous articles for publications ranging from GQ to Good Housekeeping.
For the following decade he was a Fellow of the Center for Studies of the Person in La Jolla, California, then did freelance writing and speaking in the Philadelphia area.
Contemporary Authors introduced their biography of Keyes by writing, “In his books Ralph Keyes explores obstacles ranging from learning how to deal with loneliness in an increasingly dehumanized and mobile society to the obvious and subtle difficulties associated with being unusually tall or short.
Relying on[9] statistical information, results from questionnaires, and comments obtained during personal interviews, Keyes blends a touch of humor and occasional sadness with his factual findings to come up with highly readable and entertaining studies of the insecurities troubling countless American adults.” Sociologist James Samuel Coleman, author of the seminal Coleman Report on school integration, called Is There Life After High School?
An interview with Keyes on the website Writer Unboxed was introduced with the observation that, when asked about their favorite books on the craft of writing, other authors they talked to “Almost without exception, author Ralph Keyes’ books top their list.” In The Courage to Write, Keyes wrote, “I’m often asked why I write so often about ‘negative’ subjects: tensions between fathers and sons, adolescent angst, time pressure.
The hardest work of writing, I find, is concealing how much effort it takes, and beating down the urge to show off."