How to Be Really Top Drawer

"True Prep does get a lot right in updating the original. For example, it's absolutely true that the biggest innovation is prep style is 'fleece' fibers, like the ones in Patagonia clothing. Prep clothing used to be defined by natural fibers, but now the ultimate prep material is a synthetic. Bull's-eye, I say. The authors have added a welcome section on vintage stores, and they have updated the prep pantheon to include the late, exceedingly preppy novelist Louis Auchincloss. The prep reading list, which in the last volume was a discerning mix of the obvious (The Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace) and the overlooked (Richard Yates's A Good School) has been expanded to include Evelyn Waugh, Evan Connell, and, quite sportingly, Paul Fussell's Class—a book so penetrating about prepdom that it makes all the others, this one included, look junior-varsity."

In Slate, Mark Oppenheimer reviews Lisa Birnbach and Chip Kidd's sequel to The Official Preppy Handbook.