THE HAZING READER

Forced drinking, long periods of sleep and hygiene deprivation, public humiliation (often involving nudity or vomiting), enforced servitude, verbal abuse, sexual assault, tortuous physical abuse: although this sounds like a litany of abuses in a book about the treatment of political prisoners or activities of religious cults dominated by sociopaths, these behaviors constitute the time-honored customs of some sports teams, military units, and Greek fraternities and sororities. Every so often public awareness is jolted by stories of ugly and sometimes deadly hazing rituals. New policies are made, public apologies are sometimes offered and life goes on as usual until the next disaster strikes in the form of the death of a student from severe alcohol poisoning or perhaps hypothermia. Nuwer, a hazing researcher and journalism professor at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, brings together an impressive array of experts from student affairs, professional sports, cultural studies, psychology, medicine and law to shed light on the seemingly ineradicable culture of hazing. Some of the chapters, including an important one on ritual violence in black fraternities, explore the problem's anthropological and historical roots. Several examine the psychological and addictive effects of modern initiation rites. Others highlight case studies and interviews with survivors and document institutional coverups and denials. Most important, this thorough and impressive, if occasionally redundant, collection hopes to mobilize public opinion to enact reforms aimed at forever eliminating the destructive, alcohol-saturated culture of hazing and its "wrongs of passage." (Jan.)

Forecast: The high-profile hazing events in the news—including this summer's brutal incident at a Pennsylvania high school football camp—could get this book additional media coverage and should help sales.