Yesterday Charles Kaiser reviewed the book Shortest Way Home in The Guardian and he didn’t mince words:
This is part of the life story Peter Buttigieg tells in his beautiful new book, Shortest Way Home, the best American political autobiography since Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.
OK — but I confess that political autobiographies are not my cup of tea. Even at their best (like the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X) frankly they mostly put me to sleep and I haven’t finished any of them. And Kaiser’s glowing review is not likely to prompt me to finish Buttigieg’s book either.
Still, Kaiser’s review is not the only positive one. Earlier this month in the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne wrote in his review (also available at the Bowling Green Daily News):
Buttigieg’s book is a kind of antidote to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a story of broken people in a broken place…. This is a comeback story of a place that got hit hard, survived and then began thriving again.
So if you enjoyed reading Dreams from My Father, you might take a look at Shortest Way Home. The snippets I read on Google Books were quite good, and there is something to be said for reading — or at least sampling — a candidate’s background and aspirations in his own words.