Rating: 
Summary: DISAPPOINTING
Review: "Absolutely American" is the story of the West Point Military Academy. West Point has a nearly mythological status in American history, and especially in American Military History. It was founded at the orders of George Washington and among its graduates we can count: Ulysses S Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E Lee, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and Norman Schwarzkopf. The purpose of West Point is to take young American civilians and produce fully competent Army officers who are ready to lead men. Author David Lipsky was given unprecedented access to West Point. He could go anywhere, anytime and ask any question of anyone. He stayed at West Point for four years, learning the institution and following the lives of the cadets. "Absolutely American" is the story of those four years and it gives us a look into West Point. David Lipsky takes us inside West Point for the four years that a cadet will attend. We follow the cadets through induction, basic training (a course called "The Beast"), and through each of their years. We get to have an inside look at the cadets and how they view their future service in the Army, their hopes and why they enrolled at West Point. While we only get to scratch the surface of most cadets, it is a fascinating look at these young men and women who are willing to serve our country as officers in the United States Army. We follow some cadets who are absolutely upstanding soldiers and may very well reach the highest levels of leadership if they make a career out of the Army. We meet a cadet who at first is an underachiever, but over the course of his four years he grows into a leader. We also meet several cadets who are just scraping by and we are simply waiting for them to wash out of West Point. One thing that I appreciated about this book is that we actually get to feel what the cadets are going through (as much as possible), and we start to care for them and cheer for their successes and hope that they don't mess up or fail. By the end of the book, I felt a pride both for West Point as well as the cadets who are succeeding at becoming excellent officers in the Army. I felt pride in their adherence to honor, duty, service, and loyalty. I felt pride in their patriotism and their own pride in doing the job as well as they possibly can. I am glad that these are the caliber of men and women who will be the officers of today and the leaders of tomorrow. No prior knowledge of West Point (or even the military) is necessary for enjoyment of this book. I found it both informative as well as entertaining, and I would definitely recommend this book as one to check out.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but disappointing.
Review: "Absolutely American" is, on the whole, a negative and depressing book. All the hype surrounding this book lead me to believe that it was an inspiring, moving portrait of duty, honor, and sacrifice at West Point. And when I learnt that Sept. 11 was covered in the book, I rushed out and bought it right away. The book is structed so that it follows the lives of several cadets and soldiers stationed at the U.S. Military Academy for four years. David Lipsky does a good job of depicting the details of life at West Point, which are, no doubt, interesting to read. "Absolutely American" is, after all, the first book of its kind. Lipsky had unprecedented access. He effectively portrays the (harsh/unfortunate/disappointing) realities of life at West Point, but that's ultimately all he does. He begins and ends the book proclaiming his admiration for all those he met, but he never explains why. Although he tries to expound on the merits of service, the portraits of cadets and servicemembers he presents are almost always negative. One cadet is a total failure, socially, militarily, and academically; one expects a story of triumph over the odds -- but he ends up graduating West Point just barely, and without any friends. Another cadet has just about the worst luck ever: his friend dies, he has trouble with his girlfriend, etc. One expects him to find meaning in his life through service in the armed forces, but the book ends with him resigned to duty he doesn't really want. On the whole, there are some insights thoughout the book, but I was ultimately disappointed and left asking myself why Lipsky wrote the book in the first place if he was only going to offer such a bleak picture of life as this? The reader is left wanting more; there is no closure to the story. [...]
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Awesome
Review: Absolutely American is the quintessential American feel good book. In the face of a pervasive cynicism in our culture and perhaps a generation's collective amnesia, the characters who grace the book's pages remind us of what has made us great as a people. It's the Herzogs, the Ignacios, the Supkos who have responded to the call to arms...who have accepted the responsibility of preserving our liberty, who have embraced higher ideals - duty, honor, country. In their West Point and post-West Point experience, the characters display an up-by-the-bootstraps tenacity that is so much a part of our country's heritage. Absolutely American casts the best of our country's young people in the bright light of hope - they are human, they love their country, and they will steward our precious legacy. Author Lipsky brings to every American the essence of what one of our most cherished institutions means to us today. The book's greatest strength is that it does not indulge us endlessly with U.S. Military Academy history and lore. (Make no mistake; the Academy's ardent supporters among us get our fill.) Rather, the author offers us an amazing glimpse inside the minds and hearts of his subjects - real people with real feelings handling real challenges. Why do they do what they do? What drives them? What are their hopes and dreams? No sugarcoating here. West Point cadets live in a complex world in which they might trade loyalty for duty, where uneasy bonds are forged in a crucible of unrelenting demands, where a 4-year series of rapid-fire "wake up calls" defines one's coming of age. We are provided with an insider's view of what amounts to a fascinating social laboratory - young people struggling into immediate responsibility while their peers at civilian colleges and universities are able to grow into theirs perhaps more gradually. It is as much a study in human behavior - under exceedingly rigorous conditions, to be sure - as it is a story of succeeding in adversity. Lipsky's book, for me, unleashed a torrent of memories of a simpler time in the presence of the Herzogs, the Ignacios, the Supkos. As a West Point graduate, I was able to feel the cadets' struggles so deeply. I was able to recall similar situations with similar outcomes so vividly. I was transported back to a time and place that at once was both magical and terrifying. Because Absolutely American depicts the cadet experience as it really is, very little in the way of gaps are left for the reader's imagination. A welcome surprise, the work is remarkable in its honesty. Reading Absolutely American renewed in me, as I suspect it has others, a faith in our emerging generations. That the cadets experience distractions today that severely test their mettle was not a surprise to me. In our day, we had our distractions and they were often challenging. Cadets today seem to be much more aware, more real, perhaps even a bit jaded. While they are not infallible, they more often than not seek the moral high ground. They try to do what's right! Lipsky does a terrific job of lifting the shroud of mystery that envelops West Point. Students who attend what remains a breathtaking stone fortress are not heartless automatons or bloodthirsty warriors. Instead, they are 18, 19, and 20-year old soldier-scholars - half self-conscious, half self-assured. They are trying to make sense of the world as you and I did at that age, albeit through a unique set of filters. As Lipsky points out, irony is nonexistent at the academy. Through their eyes we learn that lesson early. What sets cadets apart and what makes Absolutely American such a great read is that the academy's character is one free of the disenchantment that characterizes much of our society today. It is a book about hope and promise for shining young lives bursting with potential standing ready to answer the call to service in the proud shadow of their forefathers. Their destiny stands with the Grants, the Pattons, the MacArthurs, the Schwarzkopfs... We need to be reminded that noble ideals embodied in the words duty, honor, country still exist with us today. Absolutely American assures us that the leaders of tomorrow will perpetuate those ideals. A truly wonderful read!
Rating:
Summary: Important For Me To Tell Readers
Review: David Lipsky's book, Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, is generally what the Amazon.com description purports. As one with an interest in West Point who has read most of the books on the Academy, I believe it is important for me to tell everyone that it compares favorably with the best of them. I also believe it is important for me to tell everyone who is interested in West Point or David Lipsky's book, Absolutely American, that they should also read Norman Thomas Remick's book, West Point: Thomas Jefferson: Character Leadership Education, the most important book about West Point in my honest opinion that has come along in years (if not ever) that is at once of first significance and light in tone.
Rating:
Summary: good storytelling, but shameful journalism
Review: From a purely storytelling point of view, Absolutely American is a fine piece of writing, which reads like a compelling coming of age story. This is a fast read with compelling characters, enough of a human touch to keep us interested and bite-sized adventures that take us through a four year period. Not bad for a non-fiction book. There are some gaps here too - one cadet's personal transformation is never really explained, academics are hardly ever discussed - but the book still holds together and holds a reader's interest. (This is a great read on a plane).
Unfortunately, Lipsky is not writing light fiction/adventure but a piece of journalism about an important U.S. institution. And in this the book fails completely. It is astounding that in his acknowledgments, Lipsky sites a former editor for teaching him the value of good journalism, because there is not evidence of any such thing in this book. Even the Lord of the Rings has more social commentary and analysis of the place of violence and politics in society.
There are many issues Lipsky could have taken up in this book. What are the implications of taking bright, idealistic teenagers and systematically desensitizing them to violence, so that they think it's fun to shout "stack `em (your enemies) like cordwood!" How are these young smart kids taught to be blindly patriotic and to obey authority without questioning it? What happens when so many human and financial resources are fed to the war machine, while institutions that may reduce the need for war are underfunded or ignored altogether? What are the deeper causes and implications of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent "war on terror"? (Lipsky was at West Point during this momentous time).
I'm the reader can see my own biases here, but, regardless of your beliefs on any of these issues, these are important questions that must be addressed. It was Lipsky's job, as a reporter (the FIRST reporter to gain such unprecedented access to West Point) to examine at least some of these questions and to challenge the reader to think in new broader ways. Instead, Lipsky seems so enamored of West Point that his journalistic training goes right out the window. It seems that once the author discovered that the military wasn't made up of evil people and had some genuinely positive and admirable qualities, he decided it was ALL good. No need to ask hard questions.
The most disturbing manifestation of this is the fact that Lipsky gives President Bush, secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and others a free platform from which to tout their policies (or propaganda, depending on your view) with NO ANALYSIS and no broader context. In the wake of 9/11 he snaps into formation with the cadets and presents the speechifying about good and evil, terrorism and freedom more or less verbatim, unquestioned, no background or wider perspective presented. Instead, he uses his considerable writing skills to airbrush the slogans some more - e.g Americans were proud once again of their men and women in uniform as they watched them defending freedom on their television sets. Ah... excuse me? In the old days, this kind of thing was called yellow journalism.
Rating: 
Summary: Rash Review
Review: I am the first in line to read fiction or non-fiction as it relates to West Point. I could not wait to read this book, based upon the reviews I read. In some ways it followed "The Long Gray Line"s format of following a few individual personalities through four (4) years at the USMA. My criticism is that I had a hard time following the story (events). The author seemed to jump around a lot. Also, I got very tired of reading about Cadet Rash's pt test; enough of that, we get it. The Cadet is mediocre and should not be an Army Officer. I also had to reread sentances over and over. The writing just was not on the same level as other books on the subject. There were some paragraphs that either were out of context or just a jumble of words. I recommend it for those who never get enough of the "gray line", but overall I was disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Appreciation of New Cadets
Review: Our New Cadet (Class of 2008) writes:
"I write this letter . . . as my friend read Absolutely American out loud to us. We have sat together listening to it for a lot of free hours. . . It's been really good for squad unity and a good way to occupy our time."
Rating: 
Summary: How they do it
Review: Take American kids and turn them into leaders. This is not the West Point you think you know. Fascinating and comforting. You will be hooked and looking to the end of the book for any info on those you meet.
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Wonderful Book
Review: The journalist author chronicles his observations of the cadets and staff at the military academy. He doesn't stick with one class from induction to graduation, opting instead for a sort of scatter-shot approach which allows him a wider view: the ability to check up on graduates after they've moved on to real Army officer status, or to observe the plebes (freshmen) being inducted at any given year, which allows the reader more perspective on the experience. (It's not in the least confusing.) Lipsky writes with the clear, simple style of a reporter, informative and inviting. He really gets into his subjects' heads, conveying all the cadets' and officers' thoughts, fears and dreams about West Point and military life. He also touches on a bit of history and is not afraid to shine a light on some of the problems West Point would probably rather not admit: sex among cadets and illicit drugs especially (but both are remarkably scarce, all the same). Kudos to the academy for having the integrity to allow Lipsky full access, and kudos to Lipsky for allowing civilians a good long peek at what cadet life can be all about. (Oh, and a final word to the wise regarding some other reviews on Amazon: any "reader" that says the book is out to revel in the moral impropriety of West Point, or who could come away from the book knowing nothing about cadet Rash than he had trouble with the two-mile test, obviously stopped reading less than halfway through. Do yourself a favor if you're at all interested in the military culture: buy this book and see for yourself. Lipsky has nothing but respect for the honor and ability of these fine cadets and officers.)
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Wonderful Book
Review: This is a fabulous book. Lipsky succeeds in humanizing the Army by spotlighting the members of West Point classes 1998 to 2002. While this book is about West Point, it is told by focusing on the stories of individual cadets, and the cadets Lipsky follows through the arc of the story are compelling and fascinating people. You cannot read this book and not come away awed by the strength of their character. I was truly inspired by the young men and women Lipsky describes that choose to test themselves with 4 years at West Point and then service to their country in the military. Honor, valor, strength of character, intelligence...these cadets have them in spades. This is a fascinating portrait of a world most people never learn about, let alone experience. I can't recommend this book enough. And finally, thanks to all members of our armed forces for putting their lives at risk to protect our country.
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