Absolutely American

Summary

The book recounts four years in the lives of students at the United States Military Academy.

Plot

The book's genesis was a piece Lipsky wrote for Rolling Stone—the longest article published in that magazine since Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The book follows cadets in one West Point company, G-4, from their arrival to graduation. As Newsweek noted, composition of the book required "14,000 pages of interview transcripts, 60 notebooks and four pairs of boots." As The New York Times wrote, Lipsky was not initially well disposed toward the military: "He was, like most young people, entirely cut off from military life. The Army was the one profession his father absolutely refused to let him consider."

Reception

Absolutely American was enthusiastically received. In Time, novelist and critic Lev Grossman wrote that it was "fascinating, funny, and tremendously well-written. Take a good look: this is the face America turns to most of the world, and until now it's one that most of us have never seen. A mesmerizing and powerfully human spectacle." Newsweek called the book "addictive." In the New York Times Book Review, David Brooks called the book "wonderfully told," praising it as both "a superb description of modern military culture, and one of the most gripping accounts of university life I have read." The work was a New York Times best-seller, and was selected as required reading for the incoming class at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Film and television rights were acquired by Disney.

Awards and honors

The book was an Amazon.com and Time magazine best book of the year.