Book cover of American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus

Book description

The hookup is now part of college life. Yet the drunken encounter we always hear about tells only a fraction of the story. Lisa Wade offers the definitive account of this new sexual culture and demonstrates that the truth is both more heartening and disturbing than we thought. Offering invaluable…


When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

2 authors picked American Hookup as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I’ve long had a professional crush on sociologist Lisa Wade as her work is a deadly combination of brilliant and compulsively readable.

Her study was published while I was writing my book and serves as a companion piece to understanding how hookup culture operates on American college campuses. As de facto speakeasies, fraternity houses serve as the campus party and, by extension, hookup headquarters.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not always a good thing either.

Changes in sexuality during the 20th century have provoked popular panics in American society.

The most recent swirls around hook-up culture, a version of undergraduate social play popular since the late 1990s. Lisa Wade does a masterful job of unpacking the meanings of hook-up culture and the ways it has shaped undergraduate sexuality at many American universities. 

If you love American Hookup...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

Want books like American Hookup?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like American Hookup.

Browse books like American Hookup

Book cover of Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945
Book cover of From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America
Book cover of Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties

Share your top 3 reads of 2025!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,340

readers submitted
so far, will you?

📚 If you like American Hookup, you might also like...

Book cover of Foxfire in the Snow

Foxfire in the Snow by J.S. Fields,

It's a time of change, between magic and alchemy.

Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…

Book cover of The Main Gate

The Main Gate by Yvonne Kjorlien,

Dr. Elise Marquette has spent years burying the past—until the past refuses to stay buried.

Hired to join Earth’s first interstellar contact team, she hopes the vastness of space will finally offer distance from the ghosts of war and the wounds left by a mother who never let her be…

5 book lists we think you will like!