Books about Fraternities and Sororities
 

What books about Fraternities and Sororities do you recommend or recommend against...


Recommend:
Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities: Last Edition published in 1991, but definitely still worth reading.

Broken Pledges: (or for that matter anything by Hank Nuwer). Good book on Hazing, written by someone who is *not* anti-fraternities and sororities.

Divine Nine: Pretty good book about the NPHC

In Search of Sisterhood: History of Delta Sigma Theta that has been published in the wider market.


Recommend Against:
Pledged: very sensationalistic.

Fraternity Gang Rape: (By Sanday) Truly a sickening book. Supposedly intended as a sociology textbook I guess. If the stories in there are true, she has enough detail that people should have been prosecuted and if they are false, they are useless. From looking at her other work, she definitely had an anti-fraternity fraternity view before she wrote the book.

I recommend Black Greek 101 for people who want to know more about the culture and customs of BGLOs, especially if you are a Greek affairs professional or a volunteer for APO, GSS, KKY, TBS, and other GLOs in which there are chapters at HBCUs and/or have BGLO customs.

ETA: I also recommend Black Haze for the same reasons, but with a slant toward BGLO specific hazing.

Recommend for NPC sororites: I <3 (heart) Recruitment.

Bound By a Mighty Vow: Sisterhood and Women's Fraternities, 1870-1920, Diana B. Turk.

Highly recommended.

Ditto. And I won't even donate my copy of "Pledged" to the library. It's sitting dusty on my bookshelf. The fewer in circulation, the better.

I wouldn't recommend anything by Hank Nuwer. His fact-checking methods are spotty at best. I've had to email his website several times because he had incorrect facts on it.

Not only that, he's a publicity whore.

For southern PNMs and maybe for others: Sorority Guide, Everything You Need to Know From Alpha to Zeta- by Ceil Howle and Anna Stephens.

Going Greek: Jewish College Fraternities in the United States, 1895 – 1945 by Marianne R. Sanua (2003, Wayne State University Press)

Recommended. Includes material regarding historically Jewish sororities, too.

+++++++++

Inside Greek U:
Fraternities, Sororities, and the Pursuit of Pleasure, Power, and Prestige
By Alan D. Desantis
Year Published: 2007

Might be worth checking out reviews of this one before buying it. Not bad, but not outstanding, either, IMO.

Another ditto for Bound by a Mighty Vow! I saw the author speak at our convention in 2008, and she was a very interesting and insightful woman. She isn't Greek, but she showed a great deal of respect for sororities and the positive influences they had on women around the turn of the century. (You know, turning to the 20th century. :p)

I was about to ask about this book, but I did a search and saw it is highly recommended. I will pick it up.

Shouldn't it be from "Alpha to Omega"? :p That reminds me of a class I've subbed for a couple of times. The 6th graders are covering Greece in their ancient history section. They're making a book about everything they've learned, and it's called "Greek ABC Book." Hehehe...

It should be... But
http://www.sororityguide.com/

Or maybe it only has 6 things to say (Alpha to Zeta is 6 letters) :D

Oddly enough, though with the distribution of the sororities in the NPC, "Alpha to Zeta" takes up more than half (15 of 26) of the sororities. There are 9 that start with Alpha, Gamma Phi Beta, 4 with Delta and Zeta Tau Alpha. For the other three "quadrants": "Eta to Mu" has 4, Theta Phi Alpha andthe 3 that start with Kappa; "Nu to Sigma" has 4, Pi Beta Phi and the three that start with Sigma and "Tau to Omega" has Phi Mu, Phi Sigma Sigma and Chi Omega.

I never realized that there are more sororities in the NPC starting with Alpha than with the entire second half of the greek alphabeta.

Note, I tried contacting them by email and through the sales phone number. The emails bounced and the sales number went to voicemail without any info. I guess not enough people bought the book.

That's why the schools where ASA is called "Alphas" crack me up. That works fine when the ASA chapter has been there since dinosaur years, but for the majority of schools, it would be "Alpha WHAT??"

naraht, I'm sooooo glad you started this thread! Thanks to everyone who put up some book suggestions, I just ordered two books from Amazon! I can't wait to get my summer reads in the mail!

No problem.

Though even with Pledged and Sanday's book out there, I think the books about fraternities and sororities are better on average than the movies. *shudder*

Wasn't there talk that "Pledged" was going to be made into a movie? Maybe I am going crazy but, I thought there had been a discussion about it somewhere on here. I could be wrong but, I'm willing to bet the movie will be just as dumb as the book, provided they actually put it on film....

Yeah, it works at the HBCUs (the Alpha Phi Alpha brothers calling themselves Alpha) since the only other one of the NPHC that starts with Alpha is Alpha Kappa Alpha, and they *always* go by AKA.

I don't know if Alpha Phi Alpha would be less likely to go by "Alphas" at places with huge systems like U of Illinois. Given that I don't think there are any of the NIC fraternities that go by Alphas, it wouldn't surprise me.

And anyone who gets ASA confused with APhiA needs more than their eyes checked. :)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0811020/
*shudder*

Oh...hahahahaha....I knew it! Oh wow...just waiting to see what happens!

If I see that movie with a bunch of friends, I can see everyone leaving pissed off and breaking something.

Since there's a book about the Deltas posted, I'll post a pretty good one for SPE. It's called OUR JOURNEY OF BROTHERHOOD Sigma Phi Epsilon's First Hundred Years. I learned a lot of info from this book about SPE's history that isn't even in touched in member education.

I'd wager that most GLOs more than a few decades old have at least one history book if not more. They are interesting reads. I always keep an eye out for them at used book stores and on used book websites.

Me too.

Fraternity Histories in wide release?
 

For Alpha Phi Omega, our history book was only sold by our national office. For Delta Sigma Theta, as best as I can tell, it was sold both by the national office and in bookstores, which way are various other fraternity histories...

Apparently you can buy various Alpha books through the non-member side of the website.

ETA: I recommend them all for the serious student of BGLO history, but beware that the Centennial Book of Essays and Letters does not have an index.

I've seen some Divine 9 related books in bookstores. But I've seen lots of other histories (and in used book stores. Occasionally, I can afford them -- they can be expensive.

I really enjoyed both of these, it really helped me to understand (at least a little bit better) where my NPHC friends were coming from.

Interesting.

At Murray State, four of the five NPC sororities start with Alpha. At the NPC peak (i.e. seven NPC chapters on campus), five of seven started with Alpha. Of the five, all had Alpha or an "A" in their nickmame, but none were referred solely as Alpha.

Side note: When Alpha Phi Alpha chartered at Murray State, they were - from day one - called Alpha. And Alpha Kappa Alpha was (is) AKA.

My guess is that is that what ever the local chapter decides to call itself, becomes the norm on campus.

I recommend: The Naked Roommate. Its more of a freshmen intro into college life, but it has a good section on Greek life. It talks about the good and the bad, but is pro Greek all the way through. The guy who wrote it was in a fraternity as well.

I actually had that. I thought it was a preety handy book, though of course YMMV. Oh and FYP.

This is slightly off topic, but I have to share, and this seemed a reasonable place.

Along with keeping an eye open for fraternity/sorority histories, I also keep an eye open for pledge manuals. I've found two in the last few weeks. Yesterday, I was reading through one I bought this weekend (I'll leave the GLO unidentified, but it's the 2006 edition of their manual) and found this in the section on the Greek alphabet:

Adding to the peculiarity of the fraternity language is the fact that a few Greek letters, particularly Xi and Phi, have several pronunciations. After a consonent, they are pronounced "z-eye" and "f-eye." After a vowel the pronuncation changes to "z-ee" ad "f-ee." For example, Alpha Xi Delta is pronounced "Alpha Z-ee Delta," and Theta Xi is pronounced "Theta Z-eye."

I laughed hard at this Greek urban legend being perpetuated in print in a pledge manual -- especially when a page or two later they refer to other orgs, including Alpha Phi Alpha and Alpha Phi Omega. I'm pretty willing to bet that the writer doesn't follow the rule he just recited and call them "Alpha F-ee Alpha" and "Alpha F-ee Omega."

Whichever this GLO is, they aren't alone. When I googled for the quoted text, two *different* Social Fraternities came up as hits (or close hits) for it. These were in copies of their pledge manuals that are in public sections of their National website.

Oh, they may be alone. I googled too, and while one of the two fraternities I assume you came across had the same first sentence, the full paragraph read this way:

Adding to the peculiarity of the fraternity language is the fact that a few Greek letters (particularly Xi and Phi) have several pronunciations. Sometimes both a Greek and an English form are used in the same name because the particular group prefers it that way — “Alpha Phee” for Alpha Phi. Therefore, be alert to the exceptions to the rules.

Interesting because that section of the pledge manual is very similar to the one I was looking at. But Kappa Sigma edited and got it right. ;)

Yeah, but I couldn't go into greater depth without identifying the fraternities. Was the other one that Google brought up the one that you found?

Yep.

Yeah, I don't see a thread of pointing out things that are wrong in other GLOs pledge manuals and identifying the GLO as being healthy for greekchat.

So getting back to books, if someone is interested in joining a particular GLO and that GLO has their pledge manual online, would you recommend they read it?

(The general silliness of reading another org's pledge manual aside) How on Earth can an outsider point out what's wrong with other GLOs' pledge manuals? Aside from historical inconsistencies.

Thank you for posting that. I have seen that book and wondered about it. My oldest step son graduates high school tomorrow and will be attending college in the fall.