Hooking Up. Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus

Editorial Review

View the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction

Read the Gawker Review

Listen to her NPR Interview

The Sociology of "Hooking Up": Author Interview on Inside Higher Ed

Newsweek: Campus Sexperts

Watch Bogle's interview on CBS

Hookup culture creates unfamiliar environment - to parents, at least

Hooking Up: What Educators Need to Know - An op-ed on CHE by the author

"Bogle is a smart interviewer and gets her subjects to reveal intimate and often embarrassing details without being moralizing. This evenhanded, sympathetic book on a topic that has received far too much sensational and shoddy coverage is an important addition to the contemporary literature on youth and sexuality."
—Publishers Weekly

"A page turner! This book should be required reading for college students and their parents! Bogle doesn't condemn hooking up, but she does explain it. This knowledge could help a lot of young people make better choices and get insight into their own behavior whether or not they choose to hook up."
—Pepper Schwartz, author of Everything You Know about Sex and Love is Wrong

"In her ambitious sociological study, Kathleen Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University, offers valuable insight on the hook-up craze sweeping college campuses and examines the demise of traditional dating, how campus life promotes casual sex, its impact on post-college relationships, and more. Dont let your college freshman leave home without it."
—Main Line Today

Hooking Up uses interviews with both women and men to understand why dating has declined in favor of a new script for sexual relationships on college campuses. . . . Bogle presents a balanced analysis that explores the full range of hooking-up experiences.
Joel Best, author of Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads

It happens every weekend: In a haze of hormones and alcohol, groups of male and female college students meet at a frat party, a bar, or hanging out in a dorm room, and then hook up for an evening of sex first, questions later. As casually as the sexual encounter begins, so it often ends with no strings attached; after all, it was just a hook up. While a hook up might mean anything from kissing to oral sex to going all the way, the lack of commitment is paramount.

Hooking Up is an intimate look at how and why college students get together, what hooking up means to them, and why it has replaced dating on college campuses. In surprisingly frank interviews, students reveal the circumstances that have led to the rise of the booty call and the death of dinner-and-a-movie. Whether it is an expression of postfeminist independence or a form of youthful rebellion, hooking up has become the only game in town on many campuses.

In Hooking Up, Kathleen A. Bogle argues that college life itself promotes casual relationships among students on campus. The book sheds light on everything from the differences in what young men and women want from a hook up to why freshmen girls are more likely to hook up than their upper-class sisters and the effects this period has on the sexual and romantic relationships of both men and women after college. Importantly, she shows us that the standards for young men and women are not as different as they used to be, as women talk about friends with benefits and one and done hook ups.

Breaking through many misconceptions about casual sex on college campuses, Hooking Up is the first book to understand the new sexual culture on its own terms, with vivid real-life stories of young men and women as they navigate the newest sexual revolution.

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Customer Reviews

"Hooking Up" by Dr. Kathleen Bogle

2008-09-09
'Hooking Up' is a wonderfully written investigation of "the new dating": what it is, how it works, and the effects that it has on the young men and women (who are either willingly or unwillingly caught up in the hook up culture). Dr. Bogle interviews both college students and recent alumni during her research and lets these voices shine through in her work. This book in interesting, relevant, and insightful. I would recommend it to anyone interested in college life, male/female relations, or contemporary culture in general.

Thoughtful, Contemporary Analysis

2008-03-15
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! It's an in depth analysis of the culture of "hooking up" that could be applied to many college campuses across the United States. Kathleen Bogle does a excellent job of breaking down the jargon and stereotypes that surround the often ambiguous nature of college students' sexual relationships. Despite the academic approach of her research, the book is engrossing and easy to read, drawing upon the words of her research participants, college students, to bring depth and texture to her investigation. This book has such a wide appeal for college students, parents, educators and any others who are interested in relationship patterns and sexuality. The author effectively describes a cultural phenomenon without taking a political or philosophical point of view. As an educator, I am glad we have this research to better inform education related to relationships.

Very Impressive

2008-02-15
I just finished reading Hooking Up. What impressed me the most is that the author let the people she interviewed tell their stories so that it was the college students and twenty-something's themselves who reveal what hooking up is and how it affects them. I really appreciated that author was not judgmental and I bet that is why everyone who was interviewed seemed so forthcoming.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about what it's like to be a single man or woman today - including college students, young adults and their parents. I think women especially will find it eye opening.

A great read!!

2008-02-11
This book just validated my entire college experience! The interviews Bogle did with college men and women show the true disparity between the sexes when it comes to hooking up. I was always the girl "hoping it would lead to something" and always seemed to find the guy who was thinking the opposite. Bottom line, I laughed out loud at many of the interviews and how they tied in with my experiences, and those of my girlfriends, on campus. Also, now that I am a parent, I would strongly recommend this book to parents of first-time college students so they have a clue as to what's going on on campus and how to talk to their son or daughter about it.

skewed, alarmist, idiotic

2008-02-09
I saw a segment on ABC News about this book, and as an actual college student in my senior year, I can tell you it's completely off-base. Yes, there is a good deal of hooking up going on on college campuses; no one should tell you otherwise. But is it the "only thing available?" Is dating as dead as this book claims? Hell no. The majority of people I know in school that are seeing any action are in relationships, many of which have lasted the majority of their college careers, as mine has; college students still fall in love like in the old days, and some of them even get engaged before they graduate. If I had to guess, I'd say Bogle published only the interviews that would fit the story she wanted to tell--"dating is extinct" (to quote ABC News, another source of alarmist trash). I have to laugh at the moronic notions some old people have about the young, or the scandalous mass generalizations and stereotypes the media loves to perpetuate about college kids. Fortunately, the truth is that dating in college is alive and well, though the hook-ups are there if you want them--it's really up to you.