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??"