Year 13, Book 94

94. Fraternity: An Inside Look at a Year of College Boys Becoming Men by Alexandra Robbins

Alexandra Robbins wrote a very popular book exposing sororities a number of years ago and prefaced this book by saying that she wasn’t coming at it from the same angle and that she found a lot to recommend about fraternities and what they do to help support and shape young men during what can be a very lonely and difficult time of their lives. She focuses by following two young men in two different fraternities at two different schools while also talking about fraternities as a whole and sprinkling in other stories. Despite her efforts to talk about the good fraternities do this book did nothing to change my opinion of fraternities. There may be some good, but on the whole it seems like the bad definitely outweighs it. The things that one of the young men she writes about goes through during his pledge year are horrifying and even more so as you see him become brain washed into changing his whole outlook on how terrible these things are and then subsequently do them to others in future years. This book is a really good look into the fraternity system and poses a lot of questions at the end to parents and their teenage sons who may be thinking about rushing a fraternity. I give it a 9 out of 10.