Featured Book: Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future, by Pete Buttigieg
Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future
Pete Buttigieg
347 pages (hardcover edition)
$16.77 harcover, $14.87 Kindle
Publisher: Liveright
I first noticed “Mayor Pete” a few years ago because he was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. I grew up two cities over, in Elkhart, and my father had a music store for many years in South Bend. I knew the town well, and seeing them elect an out gay mayor was something I took great pleasure in (and no small surprise).
Now Pete Buttigieg is running for the Democratic presidential nomination and he’s turning a lot of heads: the man is smart, extremely well-informed, erudite (does anyone say that anymore?), a policy wonk who doesn’t sound like one, and a man with exceptionally wide appeal on the issues: just ask nervous Republicans.
Can a gay man get the nomination? Can a gay man win the election? I desperately want to say yes, but I’m not always an optimist when it comes to human potential. And I’ve been an out gay man myself since high school. What I want to believe, and what I’ve experienced in the way of benign neglect are two different things. But we can hope, and we can vote. At the very least, Mayor Pete is an example to all LGBTQ young people, and us older ones, too, that the greatest courage is sometimes just believing in yourself.
A mayor’s inspirational story of a Midwest city that has become nothing less than a blueprint for the future of American renewal.
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.
Pete Buttigieg is in his eighth and final year as Mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Pete was first elected mayor in 2011 at only 29 years old, and re-elected in 2015 with 80 percent of the vote.
Under his leadership, South Bend has reimagined its role in the global economy with job growth and major investment in advanced industries, with a focus on data and technology.
Pete served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and took an unpaid seven months leave during his mayoral term for a deployment to Afghanistan. For his counterterrorism work, he earned the Joint Service Commendation Medal.
In 2017, he ran for Democratic National Committee chair, earning national praise for his clear message and emphasis on rebuilding the Democratic Party from the ground up in every community. He currently serves as the chair of the “Automation and the Impacts on America’s Cities” task force at the United States Conference of Mayors.