Absolutley American
(Occasionally I will post book reviews. I read. I love it. Now you’ll read, because you love my reviews.)
Kay- so I just finished a book called Absolutely American- Four Years at West Point by David Lipsky. Pretty Cool. Reporter decides hes gonna do a story on West Point, instead he ends up following a class for four years and writing a freakin' book. Cool.
The story’s great. I always like books that give you an insight into a world you probably won’t ever enter (extreme huah). This book shows you the ins and outs of West Point. It tells you everything these kids are going through, the thoughts they think, how they push past adversity, how they fail, how they overcome, how they transform into crazy military machines, and how they make it through 4 years of college without being able to occupy the same piece of furniture with someone of the opposite sex.
It really made me want to go to West Point (but then I remembered all the dirt and bugs, and how there’d be no metro boys, and that I’d never have time for a family and kids… and how I’d be poor forever… but beyond that….). I’m intrigued by the opportunity to challenge yourself to the extreme; to push past your breaking point and to accomplish something. I enjoy leading, and the idea of being responsible for other people. Yup.. the army’s my kind of stuff.
However, I didn’t feel like the book was well organized. I was confused a little sometimes, and with so many characters names coming in and not of the story for no reason I kept mixing people up (and then having to backtrack and figure out who that guy was that said WP was like anal sex).
Yeah, but I have a friend that just left for West Point (he gave me the book to read.. duh). It was really neat thinking how he’ll be going through all the things I read about, and that he’ll be leading people (well that parts scary… lol) and he’ll get a neat little WP ring. Maybe he’ll let me wear it…. Hrm.
Anyway.. back to the point. In Summary:
Read it:
If you want to see a side of America you don’t really know a lot about
If Army boys turn you on
If you enjoy challenge
To feel patriotic
Before you visit WP
If you know someone who’s going
Don’t Read it:
If you hate the military
If you’re a pacifist
If you a close minded liberal
If you can’t stand unorganized writing
Anywho, in general I give it a- “Recommended”. Cool.
posted by DM @ 8:40 PM
1 Comments:
At 9:56 PM, August 16, 2006,
Anonymous said…
Our reasons for being here are varied and for many of us personal, but its makes us the best and brightest that our nation has to offer. And I’m not saying that with arrogance, I say that with confidence. The best and the brightest are not necessarily on campuses across the nation, or in corporate board rooms. But rather out on a training field preparing to defend the 99.6% of the population that chooses to sit back and watch on CNN. We must never allow ourselves to think, for one minute, that the kids running around on some university campus… protesting and breaking things… or whining about this that and the other…have something on us. We are privileged to have the one advantage that they all covet. We will know.. we will have facts about what is really going on in our nations wars. Our heads will not be filled with the empty theories of those who in actuality know very little, because they lack the intestinal fortitude to be involved in anything that requires risk. They are always ready to give advice but are not willing to pick up a rifle, ruck up and close in on the enemy I am speaking of the snide arrogant sort who spend the day blaming America for every wrong in the world before going home to sleep at night under that blanket of freedom provided by better men. Better men, like those of us in the Corps.
To decide to come to West Point rather than a civilian college says an awful lot about our character, to stick it out when so many in our society look daily for a reason to quit, says a great deal about our heart, the support we get from our families & friends and our ability to see the larger picture. None of us really want to go into harms way and risk it all, but our moral clarity will not allow us to sit back and let someone else provide the blanket of freedom that we cherish, and too many often take for granted.
The next four years will be very challenging, and for many of us, they will hold the defining moments of our lives... We live for that challenge... We thrive on it... I'm glad you liked the book Dana
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