I am the first to admit that I am capable of being swayed by good looks. But even more true is the hardened and proved fact that nothing gets me going like well-articulated ideas. When I picked up American Dreams by presidential candidate and Florida senator Marco Rubio, it was partly because of the handsome face gracing the cover. When I closed the cover though, I was satisfied not only visually, but mentally. American Dreams is not Rubio’s memoir, and does not claim to be, but strains of his story run throughout the nearly 200 pages. What American Dreams is, however, is a collection of hardships and difficult situations cobbled together to tell the story of the American Dream and what it has become today.

While we get glimpses into the lives of Rubio’s family, their Cuban ancestry, and their struggles to provide for a family while working as a bartender and maid, American Dreams is made up of so much more than the story of one family. In seven chapters, Rubio tells a dozen or more stories of individuals just trying to find their own slice of the American dream.

While I am an ardent Republican, I refuse to throw my vote at anyone. I require that my vote be won for every election, whether it is a seat on the student council, city council, or the presidency. That being said, Marco Rubio has won my vote. If he wants it, he can take it. American Dreams is not only a book of problems facing the American people, but it is also a book of solutions. That is what we need in our country. We need men and women who are not only willing to acknowledge there is a problem, but who are willing and able to solve those problems.

Let me preface my summary of the book with a few facts about Marco Rubio. Rubio is not your typical career politician. As you heard in the debates in Cleveland, he was raised pay-check-to-pay-check and lived that way for many years himself. He did not pay off his student loans until he was elected to office in 2012. His parents did not have a college education, and his mother is currently reliant on social security and Medicare to live comfortably. This is not the politician you’re going to normally see. This is the type of man who is not only going to help us achieve our American dream, but has worked hard to achieve his own.

In those 200 pages, Rubio addresses issues from immigration to healthcare to education to social security. Rubio not only shares personal stories of individuals losing their chance at the American dream thanks to big government, but he offers his solutions. When I closed the cover of that book, I could not shake those stories from my head. As I write this, I am thinking of families who lost their businesses due to obscene amounts of government regulations and single mothers who cannot afford to go back to school because leaving the work force would make them ineligible for programs designed to help them climb the ladder of success.

In American Dreams, Rubio not only addresses very serious issues in greater lengths than he could in any one debate, but he also adds a touch of his own humor. One of my favorite quotes from the book (and I had many) came in the chapter on retirement and said something along the lines of "If you think people aren't working well pas the age of retirement, just go look at Congress."

The American dream is not dead, ladies and gentleman, but this election has the possibility of being the bullet that kills it. I am going to spend the next 450 some days reading books by all the candidates to determine who has the best policy ideas and experience for the job, but at the end of the day, it is not solely up to me to make the American dream thrive again. It is up to us, the American people, to revitalize the American dream.

One of my favorite quotes from American Dreams summarizes my feelings on this impending election perfectly.

“So when our children and their children look back decades from now, let it be said that we did what was necessary to preserve what makes us special. Let it be said that we reclaimed the values of a strong people, and in doing so preserved the legacy of the greatest nation in the history of the world.”