Rating: 
Summary: Huah! and exhilarating
Review: Turow's "One L" is still read by those interested in Harvard Law; Robinson's "Snapshots From Hell" is read by those curious about biz school; and Michael Lewis' "Liar's Poker" is skimmed by those intrigued by the hey day of Wall Street. To this trilogy, I would add Lipsky's "Absolutely American." I became interested in Lipsky's stories from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when his reports from there appeared in Rolling Stone magazine a few years ago. His reportage profile a cross section of cadets, specifically from the G-4 Guppies, from Plebes to Yuks, Cows, and Firsties, their frustrations, their attitudes, their machismo, their failures, and their goals during a time when the Academy, like all institutions, was perpetually evolving.Lipsky came for the chow, but stayed embedded for the whole story, rented a room in Highland Falls, off post (campus), and stayed a few years (1998-2002). What other school gets diverse jocks and brains from all fifty states and territories, and forces them to work together and take leadership and honor seriously? The reader is introduced to a cross section of students who sacrifice their material comforts. Like a documentary film, you never know how it will turn out. Who will "five and fly" to Wall Street and b-school, and who will commit to an army career? Will the top students choose infantry or the more marketable aviation school? Who will be huah, and who will turn cynical? Who will be separated from the Academy? How do these macho guys (and 15% women) bond and say goodbye? When a football player cries after the Army-Navy game loss, Lipsky captures the depth of feeling towards the school and patriotic commitment. The ability to order in pizza and Chinese takeout (especially on beer battered cod fish night), the purchases of condoms and beer, Gatorade addiction, the exposure and concealment of several scandals (US Air Force Academy, listen up), internet porn and chewing tobacco, and the dramatic aftermath of 9/11 on student attitudes are tracked as the stories progress. Are there no atheists in fox holes? Probably not, since Lipsky even captures in print the bar mitzvahs of two cadets, and the evangelical fervor of another. While at other schools, faculty and tenure decisions are filled with intrigue; Lipsky shows how USMA faculty intrigue take on greater devastations when honor, duty, and the desire to fall on "grenades" for your platoon is involved. While Hollywood might depict all the Plebes rallying around the Plebe who has problems passing a phys ed requirement or honor violation, we instead see the reality of shunnings among the cadets. The book, like an indie film, unlike a Hollywood studio flic, doesn't beat you over the head with conclusions. It presents the suspense, the stories, the mud, forced groupthink, and honor, and let's you draw conclusions on the future of the military, leadership, professionalism, and America.
Rating: 
Summary: Not too bad!
Review: SAS is the British version of the US Army's Delta Force, not the Green Berets or the Rangers. (Delta is actually based after the British SAS) Despite some minor mistakes I think this is still a pretty good book.
Rating:
Summary: a classic
Review: Stirring and beautiful, the work of a truly first rate talent that captures, better than anything I know, what it feels like to test your strength against the world. I reccomend it to anyone who craves great American writing and remembers when they were young enough and nutty enough to accelerate into the turns.
Rating:
Summary: I know these guys!
Review: From mid to late 1999 David Lipsky, a writer working for Rolling Stone magazine was allowed to spend an unusually long period of time watching and writing about the cadets at USMA. There was a two installment article published in Rolling Stone magazine in late 1999 written by him. It was quite interesting. At the time USMA was interested in getting publicity for the Bicentennial celebration and welcomed media interest from all directions. Rolling Stone was one part of that media attention. Lipsky admits that he did not like the military before he came to West Point. Now, he is in love with the place. He stated that, of all the universities and colleges that he has written about (perhaps 35 in all) the students at West Point are the happiest that he has seen. Oh, they groan and gripe a lot, complain about everything but, on the whole, they are the best adjusted and happiest that he has seen in any college or university in the USA. Quite a statement, eh! After doing the research for the two installment article (about 60 pages) that he wrote for Rolling Stone Lipsky asked the academy if he could stay on and have access to "his" cadets for a full four year period. That request was granted and the book that he has written, "Absolutely American", is the result of that four year project. This book is sort of an insiders view of what cadets go through at USMA. Some good and some bad. It's worth reading. I recommend it. Larry D. Smith, USMA Class of 1962
Sacramento
Rating:
Summary: Great Insight Into West Point and Kids Who Go There
Review: I just finished this book. I was curious about West Point, and knew little about it. Absolutely American really took me inside the day to day lives of the cadets. The stories the book told, following individual cadets, were always interesting and often surprising. I felt I got a really credible look at how the cadets lived there lives and what they thought and felt. I found the cadets to be an idealistic group, much more so than your average college students. I was fascinated to see how some of them bonded with the institution and there fellow cadets while others did not. I really enjoyed the feeling of this campus on the Hudson River, just a short distance from New York City, being both a world apart and yet one of the most enduring achievements of our country, right at the heart of our country. It's a timely book now that our military appears to be becoming a vital force in the nation's life once again.
Rating:
Summary: This book was fascinating.
Review: I am a mother of five and was given Absolutely American by a friend. I found the subject matter (new cadets at West Point) absolutely fascinating--and especially interesting considering our military involvement in Iraq. The author, David Lipsky, did a wonderful job of relating the stories of the cadets in a fun and informative way. I enjoyed it so much I'm introducing it to my book club. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Moving and Important
Review: As someone originally from one of the small American towns that supplies West Point with candidates (Winterset, Iowa) but who now lives in the artistic community of Chicago, I read this book with personal and nationalistic interest. Most Americans get the news about the war and our military without knowing anyone who participates in them. Lacking that human information, we can too easily regard the armed forces as just that--forces without faces. This book supplies the faces, names and stories behind Rumsfeld's briefings and New York Times articles, and it does so with a novelistic style that is engrossing and truly moving. The reason for the book's title is simple: the people who go to West Point dedicate their lives to both the most abstract and the most concrete goals of the United States. For every American, those goals are often hard to handle and assimilate, and for none more so than West Point cadets and officers. Absolutely American looks at what it costs individuals to devote themselves to honor, discipline, responsibility and the arts of war. The kind of people with whom I spend most of my time almost never think about the kind of people who make it possible for us to live the way we do. Absolutely American shows us who they are and how they got that way. It's also funny and sexy. I don't think any woman could read this book and not want to dump her civilian boyfriend or husband for one of the "steely-eyed, flat-bellied" officers like Hank Keirsey or Huck Finn (Huck's on the cover; Hank's the centerfold with the cigar). That aside, however, this is an important book. In difficult times, our country depends on the military; the military depends on the Army, and the Army is largely run by West Point graduates. The kicker to all this is unexpected: it seems that West Point cadets and officers are happier than the rest of us. They try harder than we do to be good people who are dedicated to their code, to each other and to their missions, and somehow that makes them more fulfilled and certain about their choices than most civilians. Many of us think that being American means being free--"Hey, it's a free country," we say. Absolutely American posits that real Americans, the most extreme examples of which are those who join the military, live by ideals that are often at odds with personal freedom. Those ideals are: duty, honor, country. I don't know if I could live that way, but reading this book made me think about that as I hadn't before. It also made me laugh and gave me a few new poster boys. I recommend it to anyone who has spent any time at all since September 11th thinking about what it means to be an American.
Rating:
Summary: A Rousing Good Time And The Best West Point Story
Review: This non-fiction book takes you down to ground level with the cadets at the toughest academy in the world. I've read many books about the doings of the Long Gray Line. Ambrose, Atkinson, Trusscot, Ruggerio, Conroy. The only account that let me see things absolutely from inside cadet's minds is this one, almost as if I was receiving a series of postcards. This is a real, gripping story -- one of those rare 'non-fiction books that really reads LIKE A NOVEL.' It's full of great, honest, real characters you feel you know after you read the book, and my only criticism is that when the book was finished I felt sad/missed them and wanted to know what had happened after the graduation ceremonies of 2002. George Rash -- still out in the Army. Huck Finn -- playiing football? Whitey and Keirsy. For me, the most moving element of the book was watching each separate character respond to and step up after 9/11, when they understood that they were going to be called upon to perform the mission they had spent the four years talking about. The book is inspiring and remarkable.
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.
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.
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