"The modern understanding of work, suggests Mei, incorrectly reduces its meaning to mere necessity and utility for the purposes of maintaining life. He seeks to expand the meaning of work by conducting a hermeneutical analysis informed by the works of Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. Heidegger's hermeneutics are deployed in conjunction with Ricoeur's theory of metaphor to both critique the historical and intellectual foundations of the modern conception of work and to articulate the nature of work as a manner of giving thanks to being. In this understanding, work not only responds to necessity, but transforms it according to a metaphorical capacity to project greater meaning to work beyond the fulfillment of necessity. " - Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc.