The author earned a physics degree in college and then failed to find a job in the aerospace industry. He writes of how he fell back on his training as an electrician for sustenance and from that extrapolates how the trades have become confused with work of the hands rather than of the mind. He uses the venerable debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois a century ago over whether African-Americans should direct their energies and community development toward vocational or academic goals as example of his prescription for America today. Du Bois, who championed academics, won that debate, not only for the black community, but for all of America. It is a debate that needs to be reopened the author says.