Champagne and Meatballs: Adventures of a Canadian Communist

I found myself wandering through one of the many floor of my university's arts library searching for something to help me whittle away a few hours I had between classes. The eighth floor always catches my attention the longest. Not far from the elevator doors a few aisles of shelves house the books on communism and socialism. Eventually the shelves bleed out into other political science subjects, but I don't usually get that far when I'm searching for reading material.

I think the title of Champagne and Meatballs may have had a lot to do with why I pulled it from the shelf and settled down in a cozy corner on my campus to read it. The fact that its subject matter was also Canadian probably had a lot to do with it too. Champagne and Meatballs is the memoir of a Canadian man from his birth around the start of the 20th century into the 1960s. He retells key parts of his life as a communist in Canada at a time when, especially during the second world war, communists were seen as enemies of the state (due to Russia)and his on-off career as a writer first in Canada and then as a foreign correspondent in such countries as China and Russia.