Shortest way home : one mayor's challenge and a model for America's future /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Once described by the Washington Post as "the most interesting mayor you've never heard of," Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has now emerged as one of the nation's most visionary politicians. With soaring prose that celebrates a resurgent American Midwest, Shortest Way Home narrates the heroic transformation of a "dying city" (Newsweek) into nothing less than a shining model of urban reinvention.

Interweaving two narratives--that of a young man coming of age and a town regaining its economic vitality--Buttigieg recounts growing up in a Rust Belt city, amid decayed factory buildings and the steady soundtrack of rumbling freight trains passing through on their long journey to Chicagoland. Inspired by John F. Kennedy's legacy, Buttigieg first left northern Indiana for red-bricked Harvard and then studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, before joining McKinsey, where he trained as a consultant--becoming, of all things, an expert in grocery pricing. Then, Buttigieg defied the expectations that came with his pedigree, choosing to return home to Indiana and responding to the ultimate challenge of how to revive a once-great industrial city and help steer its future in the twenty-first century.

Elected at twenty-nine as the nation's youngest mayor, Pete Buttigieg immediately recognized that "great cities, and even great nations, are built through attention to the everyday." As Shortest Way Home recalls, the challenges were daunting--whether confronting gun violence, renaming a street in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., or attracting tech companies to a city that had appealed more to junk bond scavengers than serious investors. None of this is underscored more than Buttigieg's audacious campaign to reclaim 1,000 houses, many of them abandoned, in 1,000 days and then, even as a sitting mayor, deploying to serve in Afghanistan as a Navy officer. Yet the most personal challenge still awaited Buttigieg, who came out in a South Bend Tribune editorial, just before being reelected with 78 percent of the vote, and then finding Chasten Glezman, a middle-school teacher, who would become his partner for life.

While Washington reels with scandal, Shortest Way Home, with its graceful, often humorous, language, challenges our perception of the typical American politician. In chronicling two once-unthinkable stories--that of an Afghanistan veteran who came out and found love and acceptance, all while in office, and that of a revitalized Rust Belt city no longer regarded as "flyover country"--Buttigieg provides a new vision for America's shortest way home.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• I Remembering
• Chapter 1 The South Bend I Grew Up In (p. 3)
• II Learning
• Chapter 2 City on a Hill (p. 35)
• Chapter 3 Analytics (p. 54)
• III Campaigning
• Chapter 4 The Volunteers (p. 67)
• Chapter 5 "Meet Pete" (p. 79)
• Chapter 6 A Fresh Start for South Bend (p. 104)
• IV Governing
• Chapter 7 Monday Morning: A Tour (p. 129)
• Chapter 8 The Celebrant and the Mourner (p. 145)
• Chapter 9 A Plan, and Not Quite Enough Time (p. 158)
• Chapter 10 Talent, Purpose, and the Smartest Sewers in the World (p. 172)
• Chapter 11 Subconscious Operations (p. 184)
• V Meeting
• Chapter 12 Brushfire on the Silicon Prairie (p. 201)
• Chapter 13 Hitting Home (p. 218)
• VI Becoming
• Chapter 14 Dirt Sailor (p. 233)
• Chapter 15 "The War's Over" (p. 245)
• Chapter 16 Becoming One Person (p. 264)
• Chapter 17 Becoming Whole (p. 284)
• VII Building
• Chapter 18 Slow-Motion Chase (p. 305)
• Chapter 19 Not "Again" (p. 322)
• Acknowledgments (p. 331)
• Illustration Credits (p. 335)
• Index (p. 337)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

As mayor of his hometown of South Bend, IN, Buttigieg used his experiences as a business analyst, naval intelligence officer, Harvard graduate, and Rhodes Scholar to reinvent what had once been described as a dying city. Now in his late 30s, the author tells how he followed an unpredictable path back to his roots and details his journey into politics. His first campaign experience was to run for Indiana state treasurer in 2010. Following that unsuccessful campaign, Buttigieg decided to run for mayor of South Bend. In this role, he faced the challenges of mostly empty storefronts and long-abandoned and deteriorating industrial structures. Along the way, as a navy reserve lieutenant, Buttigieg was deployed to Afghanistan for seven months as a counterterrorism specialist while his deputy mayor filled in for him in South Bend. At the end of his deployment, Buttigieg decided to be honest about his sexuality, marrying his partner, Chasten Glezman, in 2018. VERDICT Buttigieg, a rising political star who was reelected mayor in 2016, offers an engaging story and guidance for nontraditional approaches to municipal leadership. Readers interested in politics, urban planning, and coming-of-age stories will especially enjoy this personal history.-Jill Ortner, SUNY Buffalo Libs. © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Buttigieg, mayor and native of South Bend, Ind., manifests a decent, positive, and reflective presence in this upbeat and readable memoir, which follows a career path that recently landed him on the short list for chair of the Democratic National Committee at the age of 36. In seven sections, the narrative retraces his life so far: after Catholic school, Buttigieg attended Harvard, where the Institute of Politics afforded him the chance to observe some leaders and public servants up close, and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. These academic credentials led to a job with McKinsey & Company after a stint campaigning for John Kerry in 2004, during which he cultivated a taste for public office and enlisted in the Navy Reserves. Three years into his first mayoral term, he was called up for a seven-month deployment in Afghanistan in 2013, which spurred new insights on being of service and on foreign relations. After his service, he came out to his parents and then the city (via a newspaper editorial) and met and married his husband, Chasten, about whose family he writes warmly. In the final section, he discusses how "obvious" it seems to him that "economic fairness and racial inclusion could resonate very well in the industrial Midwest." Buttigieg's memoir is an appealing introduction of its author to a larger potential constituency. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1982, Buttigieg was an eager student at Harvard and a Rhodes Scholar before landing a prestigious job with a premier management-consulting firm, working on national-level political campaigns, and even running for state treasurer. He found his niche as mayor back in his hometown, a typical Rust Belt city beset by diminishing population, the loss of its income base, and urban blight. Relying on every aspect of his education and work experience, Buttigieg fought his way from political underdog to innovative public servant to popular second-term mayor. His successes have been credited to introducing data-based decision making, concentrating on current assets instead of bemoaning what used to be, and forming coalitions by reaching out to community groups, across the aisle, and up through state and federal levels. Readers will find telling insights into the events that shaped Buttigieg's biggest decisions and share a typical day in the mayor's office; relive Buttigieg's tour of duty in Afghanistan (while he was still acting mayor); and understand his angst over being a young, gay public figure trying to get a date (spoiler alert: there's a happy ending!). First and foremost a great, engaging read, this is also an inspiring story of a millennial making a difference.--Kathleen McBroom Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

The young mayor of South Bend, Indiana, now in his second term, explains what mayors do and offers ideas for the country as a whole.Being a mayor, writes Buttigieg"Budda-judge," he writes of the phonetics, "was close enough and easier to remember than any other way we could think to write it down"is a constant, grueling act of juggling constituencies while being sure they all have access so they can express their viewpoints and concerns. So it was in the matter of a seemingly small order of mayoral business: namely, renaming a South Bend street to honor Martin Luther King Jr. The city had one such street already, but it was less than a mile long and had no buildings along its route that bore its address. It would have been easy enough to act by fiat, writes the author, but opening the door to comment meant that every proposed renaming "met a new angle of resistance." Enter lawyers, business owners, residents, and assorted other people before a downtown street, one of many bearing the name of a patron saint, was finally designated. It took four years, writes Buttigieg, "or twenty, depending on how you start the clock." The process may have been painful, but in the end, it was successful and had a happy ending. Not so with every episode the author recounts. As he astutely notes, handling a mayorship and the challenges of reckoning with the "primacy of the everyday" can be like "changing channels every five minutes between The Wire, Parks and Recreation, and, occasionally, Veep." Buttigieg's memoir/policy manual has all the signs of a book meant to position a candidate nationally, and his easy movement among and membership in many constituencies (gay, military veteran, liberal, first-generation American, etc.) suggests an interesting political future.For the moment, a valuable rejoinder to like-minded books by Daniel Kemmis, Mitch Landrieu, and other progressive city-scale CEOs. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Born in Indiana in 1982, Pete Buttigieg is the US secretary of transportation and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. A Rhodes Scholar and Navy veteran, Buttigieg was educated at Harvard University and the University of Oxford. He and his husband live in South Bend.