Review of Piled Higher and Deeper: The Folklore of Campus Life. By Simon J. Bronner. Little Rock: August House Publishers, Inc., 1990. 256 pages, including Bibliography and Index. Paper, $9.95. This new book by Bronner is a gem both for teachers of folklore and for general readers who want an entertaining look at campus folklore over the centuries. It is well-written, and easy and enjoyable to read. It is also thoroughly documented. Bronner not only provides extensive parenthetical references in the text, he includes a very useful and current bibliography of 15 pages of very small type -- nearly 500 references in all - that seems to include virtually everyone and everything. The book’s method is a bit unusual in that much -- perhaps most -- of the material is taken from previously published works, but a significant portion is unpublished material Bronner has collected himself. For instance, he relies heavily on his extensive mailed-surveys of campus traditions. The result is a bit disconcerting -- I don't really know why -- but functional. He is able, by this means, to illustrate the changes in campus lore from the earliest times to the immediate present. Most books have problems, and this one is no exception. For instance, the print looks like it was done on a Macintosh computer; it has almost a "typescript" look. But, I can live with that; after all, the golden age is gone. One of the things that strikes me hardest about this book, though, is what it doesn't include. There is no mention, for instance, of the AIDS legends and jokes that swept American campuses in the late 1980s, which I consider a pretty major omission. Neither are some of the cafeteria legends ("Grade D -- Not For Human Consumption," :for instance) which have been around for 15 or more years included. Nor does he include my favorites, the "How many X does it take to change a light bulb?" jokes. Yet he does include the "4.0 if one's roommate suicides" belief. So, we are left uncertain about what his criteria for inclusion are. The book is also a bit uneven in analysis. Especially in the chapters on fraternity/sorority and graduation rituals and traditions, analysis outweighs data, but in the earlier sections the reverse is true. Likewise, the analysis seems almost ad hoc: psychological here, sociological there; historical here, textual there. Such eclecticism is fine with me, but it does take a bit of getting used to at first. The scholarship is solid, though; no problems there. Overall the good far outweighs the bad. It is a useful and entertaining, and pretty thorough, book that I'll very probably include in my supplemental course materials -- and cite portions from it until my colleagues begin to avoid me. Jim Vandergriff English Department Southwest Missouri State University