Pete Buttigieg

Once described by the Washington Post as "the most interesting mayor you've never heard of," Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-six-year-old Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has improbably emerged as one of the nation's most visionary politicians. First elected in 2011, Buttigieg left a successful business career to move back to his hometown, previously tagged by Newsweek as a "dying city," because the industrial Midwest beckoned as a challenge to the McKinsey-trained Harvard graduate. Whether meeting with city residents on middle-school basketball courts, reclaiming abandoned houses, confronting gun violence, or attracting high-tech industry, Buttigieg has transformed South Bend into a shining model of urban reinvention. While Washington reels with scandal, Shortest Way Home interweaves two once-unthinkable success stories: that of an Afghanistan veteran who came out and found love and acceptance, all while in office, and that of a Rust Belt city so thoroughly transformed that it shatters the way we view America's so-called flyover country.

One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future

Shortest Way Home

America's Best Chance

Trust

'His campaign was historic for all America' Guardian Trust will be our essential tool as we face unique challenges of the decades ahead. In a century warped by terrorism, Trumpism, financial collapse, populism, systemic racism, Russian interference and a global pandemic, trust within and among nations has been squandered, sacrificed, abused, stolen, or never properly built in the first place. In a piercing exploration of the soul of the American nation involving history, philosophy and memoir, former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg explores the strong relationship between prosperity and social trust. Our success, or failure, in confronting the greatest challenges of the decade - racial and economic justice, pandemic resilience, and climate action - will rest on whether we can effectively cultivate, deepen and repair the networks of trust that are now endangered, or for so many, have never even existed. This means trust in institutions, in each other, and in the democratic project itself.

Pete Buttigieg

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