Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point

"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.

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, and the Supkos who have responded to the call to arms... who have accepted the responsibility of preserving our liberty... who have embraced the higher ideals of duty, honor, country. In their West Point and post-West Point experiences, 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 reader 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, and 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 to 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,

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, and the Supkos who have responded to the call to arms... who have accepted the responsibility of preserving our liberty... who have embraced the higher ideals of duty, honor, country. In their West Point and post-West Point experiences, 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 reader 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, and 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,

I've read a lot of books about West Point and other American military academies. The one thing nearly every author has difficulty conveying is a full, comprehensive picture of a cadet's (or midshipman's, as appropriate) day to day life: what he expected, what he confronts, what he hopes for. I finally found some of that in Ed Ruggero's "Duty First" (2001). But David Lipsky's "Absolutely American" eclipses even that. If Lipsky's access to the USMA and its students was unprecedented, the book he produced amply deserves that accolade too.This book is an engrossing look into the lives of a number of West Point cadets and their officers. I frequently found myself reading 50 pages at a stretch. The pace is quick, yet it never felt rushed. Whatever your personality type or opinions of the Academy, chances are you'll find someone to sympathize with and root for, whether it's the hard-charging, *huah* Mark Thompson, the conflicted "Whitey" Herzog, the hard-luck George Rash, or any of several others. Lipsky's ability to paint full portraits of these cadets during this critical time in their lives shouldn't be underestimated.One of the inevitable elements of any West Point book is the argument over whether the Academy has "gone soft" in the years since ... well, generally since whoever's speaking attended there. That same debate is part of this book too, and it shapes much of the dramatic tension that gives the book its almost novel-like quality. It's easy to take sides, but there aren't any easy answers: Should George Rash have been driven from the Academy, or was he being unfairly picked on? Was LtCol Keirsey a hero, a villain, or just a fall guy to "political correctness"? Is Captain Paredes a martinet, or a defender of Academy standards? This book raises a lot of questions that civilians as well as military types should be willing to give thought to.It's easy to think of the cadets in this book as characters. But now, they're out on the front lines (in fact, I read the section about one cadet's decision to post to a new light-infantry battalion located near Seattle on the same day I saw on the TV news that that very battalion is about to be shipped to Iraq; presumably he's going with them). I predict the people the reader meets in these pages will stick with him for a long time after the book is complete.In fact, as I read "Absolutely American," I kept having two thoughts. One was that it would be great to revisit these now-former cadets every few years ... like Michael Apted's famous series of British documentaries, "Seven Up," "Seven Plus Seven," "14 Up," and so on ... to see how they're doing. The second thought, being someone naturally more sympathetic to the sea services than to the Army, was, "I wish someone would do this for Annapolis too."So, Mr. Lipsky: Do you have any plans for the next four years?

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.