There are moments here where Buttigieg seems to be pushing things a bit: The story of his piano recital with the South Bend Orchestra is cute but not the stuff of greatness. On the other hand, his candid discussion of what it’s like to come out as gay while serving as a small-city mayor and, especially, his warm and engagingly hokey description of falling in love with the man who would become his husband break important new ground in a pre-presidential autobiography ... And in [Buttigieg's] description of his military service in Afghanistan as a Navy Reservist, the lack of drama is admirable. He identifies himself with the rank-and-file; there is no puffed-up heroism here. He is, however, properly critical of the failure of those who share his elite educational pedigree to join the military in a time of war ... these pages make a pretty good case that city halls just might be better training schools for the presidency than attendance at any five years of congressional hearings combined.

Until he recounts writing his coming-out essay for The South Bend Tribune, I had begun to wonder if Buttigieg had decided to airbrush his life story, with an eye to some future opposition researcher combing through these pages. This lends a cautious, sanitized feeling to some episodes ... No one would ever accuse Buttigieg of being an evocative writer, but the story is told with brisk engagement—it is difficult not to like him—without sinking into the kind of prose one might fear from someone trained in writing reports for McKinsey. He writes with particular clarity when it comes to the subject of romance ... After reading this memoir...the notion that Buttigieg might be the nation’s first openly gay president doesn’t feel...as far-fetched.

Buttigieg somehow relates this charmed life with suitable self-effacement, eyes cast modestly downward as in the photograph on the book’s cover, a not unimpressive feat given the perfection of his résumé ... Not so fast ... There are gaps in the record. There’s an avoidance of self-analysis, a refusal to plumb motivations, a tiptoeing across the minefield of human experience. Its wide-eyed ingenuousness strains credulity if only because all credulity, in the age of Trump, is now so strained that it may be collapsing, like the climate, altogether. The self-presentation is too glossy, too ideal. Nowhere does one get the sense that the author has ever experienced a setback or suffering of any kind ... But it’s hard to escape the suspicion that this frictionless memoir represents, beyond the obvious political calculation, an act of self-conscious second-guessing ... There’s not a lot of Joycean revelation going on here. Instead, Buttigieg often approaches himself with Spock-like detachment ... The most revealing anecdote Pete Buttigieg has told about himself occurs not in Shortest Way Home but in the New York magazine profile ... there’s a sad, Pinocchio-like quality to him ... Can he become a real boy? A real politician? First he must prove himself brave, truthful, and unselfish. With this memoir, in which our hero emerges from a bedtime story of a book freshly carved and polished for his political future, he may be halfway there.

Buttigieg's warm, thoughtful narrative voice reflects his approach to local politics: seeing people as individuals who are also part of their community and figuring out how to make their lives better. During a turbulent moment in national politics, it's refreshing to read an account of hope, compassion and plain hard work at the local level. Buttigieg's story is particular to South Bend, but it offers insights for those working to lead cities around the country. His personal journey—as a local boy returning home, a Navy Reserve officer juggling his day job and commitment to his country, and a gay man coming out and finding love while in the public eye—is equally compelling.

The book is clearly intended as a campaign document, and contains all the humanizing anecdotes and professional backstory typical of a political memoir. But Shortest Way Home is more than just a stump speech with a dust jacket. It’s a vivid and surprisingly lyrical portrait of a city and a man in transition — and an intellectual performance in which Buttigieg succeeds in making his play at the presidency seem entirely, thrillingly appropriate ... This is more that just campaign copy — it’s real writing ... Though [Buttigieg] admits to the political risk of coming out, he makes no corresponding personal analysis. Is Buttigieg torn up about being gay? How does he come into an awareness of his sexuality? How does he square his desires with the teachings of his Catholic high school? We never find out, and skip straight to the happy ending ... Buttigieg’s book is so much better than most political memoirs, and its quality sharpens the reader’s appetite for true confession, for true disclosure ... It’s therefore a disappointment to see Buttigieg go mum on this front when he’s otherwise so forthcoming, at least by the standards of presidential candidates.

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.

... Buttigieg writes astutely about real issues facing our communities, such as the proverbial brain-drain of talent and youth; the economic effects of the loss of manufacturing jobs, and how to continue building community across racial, economic and religious lines ... While Buttigieg isn’t stingy with bureaucratic details, he’s equally generous with personal and narrative descriptions, making even the most banal scenes engaging and memorable, such as his conversations with Democratic Party Chairman, Butch Morgan, who wields a landline phone like a weapon. A thoughtful, sincere memoir about one man’s love for his Indiana hometown, Shortest Way Home proves that one needn’t be connected, or a certain age, or of a certain background, to make a difference in a community.

The book’s purpose isn’t to tell a great story but to signal the author’s political viability ... Mr. Buttigieg... writes at length about the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, and you wonder why he takes pains to explain views that were Democratic boilerplate from 2003 to 2008 ... The whole thing reaches the level of farce when the author explains why a photograph exists of him and Vice President Mike Pence, then Indiana’s governor...

Shortest Way Home is a story of changing minds by focusing on the local, the interpersonal, and the everyday. It is a seductive notion, especially filtered as it is through the good-natured humor and obvious love for his home city that animates Buttigieg’s prose. Yet a campaign memoir is a political proposal as much as it is a work of literature, and the narrative is at its thinnest where it draws the proposal’s contours. Buttigieg’s vision for an equitable society...reads as vague and academic, notably out of keeping with the practical granularity of other examples of his governing philosophy ... Readers looking for radical politics or concrete solutions in the pages of Shortest Way Home may be disappointed ... To read Shortest Way Home is to experience a profoundly millennial product, one that paints a starkly different reality and vision than the one on offer from boomers who currently have a death grip on the government’s reins.

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.

[Buttigieg] can write. And if at times he is merely elegantly formulaic, smoothing all experience into a sleekly 'wannabe President' presentation of his story, at others he’s plain elegant ... Buttigieg sweats every drop of his experience running a small city, with impressive claims around his curtailment of gang crime and improvement of the roads and sewers.

Buttigieg, mayor and native of South Bend, Ind., manifests a decent, positive, and reflective presence in this upbeat and readable memoir ... Buttigieg’s memoir is an appealing introduction of its author to a larger potential constituency.