Portions of Absolutely American were published in Rolling Stone magazine[3][4][5][6] and were broadcast on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

[8] The book's genesis was a piece Lipsky wrote for Rolling Stone[9]—the longest article published in that magazine since Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

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

In Time, novelist and critic Lev Grossman wrote that it was "fascinating, funny, and tremendously well-written.

As Sara Nelson reported in the New York Observer,It's every author's dream: You write a book that everybody loves.