Absolutely American - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

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

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

—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

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

noted, composition of the book required "14,000 pages of interview transcripts, 60 notebooks and four pairs of boots." As The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

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

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

, novelist and critic Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the novels Warp , Codex , The Magicians and The Magician King...

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

Newsweek

called the book "addictive." In the New York Times Book Review, David Brooks

David Brooks

David Brooks may refer to:* David Brooks , American actor and stage director and producer* David Brooks , Australian author of short stories and co-editor for Southerly...

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.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.