A skeptic might say that, like the Who's Who of American High School Students, it exists for the purpose of listing all our names at the end so we'll buy it and make someone some money. Yeah, that is what everyone here presumably checked first, and heads threatened to roll when a past Crimson president heard that his name was left out in the galleys.

But there is more. It's too bad that Greg Lawless (or 'GFL,' as Crimson tradition would have it) didn't put together a collection of the best Crimson pieces ever instead of the representative sampling he tried to assemble. Still, there is some good stuff in these 374 pages, even if you don't have 14 Plympton St. on the brain. Not 17 dollars worth, to be sure, but enough to waste an hour or so in Lamont with if you're too lazy, or more likely unmotivated, to investigate Harvard's past through a direct look-over of volumes.

In his introduction, Anthony Lewis '48, former Crimed and now New York Times op-ed pager, describes this collection of Crimson news stories, essays, editorials, letters, cartoons and whatnot as "...more than a book about The Crimson or about Harvard University over the last hundred. It is I think, a piece of social history."

Sure, why not? Not every piece--in fact, very few--describes occurrences so mundane as a CHUL meeting or the ever-popular event described by the clever Crimson headline "Long Weekend Arrives: Some Leave, Others Stay." There are some serious and insightful articles in here which are no less legitimate because they appeared in a "college" newspaper. John G. Short '70, who made a habit of covering events by participating first and writing later, delivers a long and impassioned account of running with the Weathermen during the Days of Rage in Chicago in 1969; Jody Adams '69 writes movingly about the University Hall bust--"Inside, With Arms Linked, the Kids Awaited the End"--with fire and anger and sadness. "The Quest for the Cocktail Soul at Princeton," written in 1960, effectively reveals the sadism and bigotry of Princeton's "Bicker" process by which sophomores are elected to private eating clubs.

The book--divided into eight sections, including the University, college life, politics, and "wit and wisdom"--is littered with information that will surprise or amuse you, pique your anger or imagination, or perhaps make no impression whatsoever. You will discover things that you may or may not wish to know, like the genesis of the tradition of shouting "Rinehart!" and the goldfish swallowing fad, which was originated in the Harvard Union on March 3, 1939 by Lothrop Withington Jr. '42. If kiosks, unionizing shuttle bus drivers and the proposed Third World center make you wonder what passed for controversy at Harvard in generations gone by, The Crimson Anthology will give you a taste.

As far as the writing goes, it varies, as one would expect. In its first half-century or so, The Crimson--founded in 1873 as The Magenta--focused primarily on football games, with class schedules, ads and listings rounding out its scrawny pages. After a stint as The Harvard Summer News during World War II, the paper came of age, during the '50's with reasonably comprehensive coverage of the McCarthyiteonslaught on academic freedom. But the late '60's were when the growing Crimson began to bristle with the emotion and turmoil of the anti-Vietnam War movement (although its editorial position, as the book shows, wavered back and forth on the issue before climaxing with a full-blown statement of support for the National Liberation Front in October 1969). And as the politics and the society shifted over the decade, its changes, to whatever degree, were reflected in The Crimson, as the meticulous, somewhat stolid style of earlier years gave way to openness and experimentation. And for those who have noted the later careers of writers like Timothy' Crouse '68 (Boys on the Bus), Frank Rich '71 (now chief New York Times drama critic), Halberstam, J. Anthony Lukas '55 (Times Pulitzer prize-winner), Mike Kinsley '72 (The New Republic), James Fallows '69 (The Atlantic Monthly) and numerous others, it is interesting to see what they wrote before "maturing" into the realm of slick publications and even slicker editors, when they wrote purely because they felt a need to, without contracts and glossy ads and people to feed.

What shows up in the Crimson each day--despite an elaborate system of editing and proofreading--is often very raw; the product of panic and deadlines, hurried phone calls and illegible notes. It is sometimes bad, usually pretty bland, but occasionally very good and once in a while it manages to be very very good. There is something for just about everyone in this book, though it is unfortunately short on politics, the subject which has driven Crimson editors to many of their best pieces over the years. It won't really tell you what The Crimson is all about--just as reading The Crimson won't tell you what Harvard is all about--but it will supply an unusual perspective on the last hundred years just the same.