"We wage laborers we are striped of this genuine and real meaning of life to become little more than raw materials for industry. Work is no longer an inspired and enjoyable emergence of happiness, but becomes a necessary gravity to be undergone required in order to survive."
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Debate Over Lunch by Michael Joseph Francisconi Trafford Publishing
book review by Wendy Strain
Presented as a memoir tracing through the author's journey toward political philosophy, the text itself is more of a treatise on the socialist agenda. The author cites from a number of highly influential people in socialist thought, attempting to present the material in a thoughtful yet approachable way. However, the narrative is very dense with complex ideas. It is not an easy or a fast read by any means, and wasn't necessarily intended to be so. Because of the title of the book, though and its description on the outside cover, a fast and easy read is what is expected causing the reader to have to shift gears every time the book is approached.
The book would have benefited greatly from a careful line edit. The author frequently leaves out important articles of speech. Sometimes this is not a big deal, as when a plural "s" is omitted from the end of a word; the reader is able to easily discern the meaning. At other times, this omission causes a significant stumble on the part of the reader to try to determine the correct order of a sentence already packed with meaning. The double puzzle of figuring out what the sentence is saying and what ideas it is meant to convey often proves overwhelming. Once the meaning is teased out of the text, there are some very well-considered ideas involved and the author is obviously very well-read in this field, although Francisconi frequently quotes other authors, perhaps too much so. Overall, the text seems a good overview of the current thought, but one should reserve a very large block of time to work through it.