Shortest Way Home

I was surprised at how light this book is on vision for America's future. I thought it was going to come in the last chapter, but surprisingly it didn't arrive at all. Instead this book is heavy on details of Buttigeig's day-to-day job as a mayor, running his campaign for mayor, university studies, and his work at McKinsey. The continuous examples of his common-sense, data-driven approach were impressive, and his career trajectory is impressive, but I didn't learn a lot of big, new things about him from this book, just a ton of minor details.

Stand-out chapters for me were the ones where I did glean interesting new info: Chapter 14 and 15 on his deployment to the Afghanistan war, where he gave a detailed view of his day-to-day work in Afghanistan, and the thoughts he wrestled with around the cost of life in war. Chapter 17 on his relationship and proposal(s) with his partner, which was very personal and heartwarming.