Customer Reviews

Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

David Lipsky, a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, and the son of self-proclaimed hippie parents whose zip code is in Greenwich Village is assigned to write about a class of cadets and write his story after a year. Nurtured with a distrust and dislike for anything military, he anticipates that West Point will throw up one roadblock after another. He is surprised when they give him unrestricted access the academy.

He sets about following one class that reports in July for "Beast Barracks" where new cadets or plebes are whipped into shape, must learn military courtesy and how to march. Lipsky must also develop an ear for the traditional jargon of West Point, some of which are many decades old. First, it is not West Point Military Academy, but the United States Military Academy at West Point, a promontory within academy borders. Freshmen are fourth classmen or more commonly known as plebes. Sophomores are third classmen and informally known as yearlings or yuks. Juniors are second classmen and are informally known as cows. The seniors are called first classmen, and are informally known as firsties.

The author starts out with a brief history of cadets fighting in past wars and fighting each other in the Civil War with the utmost lethality while maintaining the utmost civility for each other. Where the country could not stay together, the bond amongst cadets was inseparable in spite of uniforms of different color. I wish Lipsky had spent a little more time on this, which he managed to write with some humor.

He quickly attaches himself to a group of cadets called the corporation, the cadet who cannot pronounce the name of the game he plays (fooball), and a keen interest in a hapless, but likeable cadet named George Rash who is on the verge of being thrown out of West Point for lack of physical agility on several occasions. George skims just above the waves of academic and physical disaster. Other cadets mention his name "Raaaash" with emphasis, not as an act of unkindness. In George, they see their own worst fears as real and tangible.

The author asks for and receives permission to follow the class to graduation. You can tell that he is gaining respect for the men and women of West Point.

The most telling story for the author seemed to be his recounting of a lieutenant colonel (LTC) who takes responsibility for one of his captains who has an inappropriate anecdote on his computer. His computer being open, the cadets soon download the message, and pass it throughout the academy. The colonel tells his captain: "You're my subordinate. That means I'm responsible for your actions." The LTC, who has his enemies, stands up for his captain, takes the responsibility, and is forced out of the service. In retelling this account in New York restaurants and bars, the author's listeners do not understand why the colonel was punished, and not the captain. This is the telling point for the author, because in spite of his anti-military upbringing, he has learned enough about West Point to not only know the language, but to know how they think and even more, understand it. Lipsky makes his admiration quite clear for a man whom he sees as the embodiment of the academy motto: Duty, Honor, Country.

He follows the class through their romances, competitions, and obstacles. In the third year, the cadets are sworn in. Now they must serve in the army as enlisted men if they fail or drop out, and repay the army the cost of their education. In the fourth year, cadets request their branch. In the army, branches mean infantry, armor, artillery, aviation, quartermaster, etc.)

The author follows many of them through graduation, and into their first assignments. And George Rash? George finishes second from the last in his class. This is probably the worst spot because the lowest in the class, also known as the goat, which happens to be the mascot of Annapolis, collects the lottery which consists of $1.00 from every cadet in the brigade. Even in this George misses, but he didn't miss being posted to one of the army's least desirable places--Ft. Polk, LA.

This is an excellent narrative for one who wants to learn about modern day West Point, and the men and women who still attempt to live by a code of honor that seems almost archaic in our modern society.

Keep in mind, this is a story about West Point, not the army.

But still, GO ARMY! SINK navy!

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, 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 essential character is one free of the disenchantment that pervades 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 Eisenhowers, 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!

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.

"Absolutely American" gives you what should have been an interesting look at our renouned U.S. Military Academy, but somehow managed to make it boring. What I thought would be a bonafide look at the Military Academy turned out to be a lot of interviews and stories of a lot of cadets (which are interesting to them and their families, not to me), and, maybe it's only me, but I got the impression that in the strict interviewing environment of the Military Academy the interviews and stories are very much softened with "spin". All in all, the book was not very captivating.

I think "Absolutely American" could have been so much more, but fell short. I am so glad that David Lipsky recorded the stories of the cadets, West Point History, and the instructors for all of us to read. Unfortunately, Lipsky's writing style is disjointed and detracts from the compelling stories. His chapters jump back and forth, and try to cover the experiences of too many cadets at once. I wish that Lipsky had stuck with a few key cadets, and not inserted so many other anecdotes because it made his work difficult to follow. I can't exactly pinpoint why Lipsky's writing style falls short of paying the stories justice--perhaps it's almost to MTVish (i.e jumping back and forth.) However, I believe that David Lipsky does give the public a better, clearer idea of what it means to be a cadet at West Point. It's worth the read for the substance, but certainly not the style.

My favorite story was of Don "Whitey" Herzog and his career choices.

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.

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?

"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.

you'll likely have high expectations for this book because of all the breathless press it has received -- how astonishing: a literary lefty type (greenwich village jew who attends brown and johns hopkins) learns to admire west point.

but does he?

what is so disappointing is that lipsky was given unprecedented access to this storied institution. his stammering, "i can't believe this happened" account of how the book came to be -- reluctantly sent for a few weeks, stayed four years -- notwithstanding, a writer who had had modest success in the 'new yorker' and as a contributing editor for 'rolling stone' must have been impressed by what he found at the usma.

you will put down this book knowing very little about west point. in fact, the character you will remember best, the one who gets the most print, and is analyzed most in-depth is a veritable loser: a misfit who against all odds makes it through -- despite having to take numerous remedial physical fitness tests, and the desire of several staff to have him kicked out. out of a class of 1000 cadets, it's interesting that he hones in on this hapless dolt. no one in their right mind would want their child to be one of his soldiers, and thinking of this guy as an officer in the u.s. army will have plenty of anti-military people types cluck-clucking.

you will be compelled by some of the profiles -- how could one not be? regardless of how one feels about the military, this is unarguably a collection of some of america's finest youth. but there are too many short cuts: e.g. the story about a revered officer who takes responsibility for a subordinate's unpublished, but leaked, powerpoint slide entitled "class of 2000 homo factor report" which was an attempt at parody, and encouraged cadets to select infantry, but brings down the veritable hero leaves the reader hanging. there has to be far more to the story than is reported. which made me wonder what conditions lipsky agreed to in order to get the access he did. am i the only reader who finds it strange that a young author whose most prominent piece, a lengthly 'rolling stone' article titled 'to be young and gay' (recommended reading, btw) doesn't mention homosexuality once in 311 pages (drugs are touched, sex is lightly addressed -- as if the most trying issues facing these supercharged young adults are an afterthought)?

where is the top down analysis of the relevance of the institution today? where is the questioning of whether the type of 'huah' enthusiasm that is drilled into the cadets will best serve them in today's 'army of one'? what is so disappointing is that the reader is tantalized by situations and personalities, but left unsatisfied because they are not thoroughly explained or analyzed. even someone who has spent many years in the military (as i have), and is familiar with the jargon and acronyms will have trouble keeping things straight.

this writer clearly skipped boot camp -- both literary and military.

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.