West Point Chronicles Chosen for Summer Reading Program

Posted on March 1, 2004

When UNC’s new students march onto campus in August, it will be life at a school of a different sort – West Point to be exact – that they’ll be talking about.

In a 5-4 vote on Feb. 25, members of the Summer Reading Program Book Selection Committee chose Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point by David Lipsky as this year’s Summer Reading Program book.

On Aug. 23, the day before classes begin, about 3,500 freshmen and 800 transfer students will participate in small group discussions, led by faculty and staff, of Lipsky’s book. The discussions, which are voluntary and not for credit, are meant to be an academic icebreaker and an exercise in discussion and dialogue.

In his nonfiction book, Lipsky, a Rolling Stone magazine reporter, details four years in the life of West Point cadets.

Administrators have said the Summer Reading Program, now in its sixth year, encourages students to take information and draw conclusions from the complex world around them.

“Absolutely American satisfies the Summer Reading Program criteria,” said committee Chair Jan Bardsley, adding that although the experience of West Point cadets might differ from that of UNC students, she expects it will bring lively discussion and a relevant topic matter. “The book is readable, topical and relevant to students’ own experience. We know that it will promote lively dialogue in the August discussion groups.”

Bardsley also said she hopes that reading about the years of service that the cadets owe after their four years at West Point might raise the question of what students at Carolina also might give back.

After a four-month process that whittled down a list of 500 books to two, the nine-member committee of students, faculty and staff chose Absolutely American over the other finalist, Bill McKibben’s book about the cloning issue, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.

Some have said Absolutely American comes out right of center politically and is favorable toward the military. This would reflect a change from past years in which conservative students and watchdog groups complained that the program’s selections, especially Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells andNickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, were said to be too liberal.

But Bardsley said the five members who voted for Absolutely American appreciated its lack of a strong argument one way or another about the military, not because the choice avoids controversy. “The agenda-free feeling of the book was very appealing,” she said. “The book itself doesn’t have a strong point of view . so I hope that students will use their reading of this college experience to discuss their own hopes and ambitions for their experience here.”

Lipsky is completing an epilogue to include the experiences of West Point graduates who served in Iraq. That new edition is expected to be available for UNC participants in May.

Absolutely American gets its title from a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt at the West Point centennial in 1902 in which he said that “of all the institutions in this country, none is more absolutely American” than West Point.

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