Three and a half stars, rounding up to four. For the first half of the book it was a solidly three star read for me, and that was entirely due to the prose. It was considered and technically competent, but... I don't want to say that it was devoid of personality, because that's not quite it. It was more that it was so very consistently earnest, cheerful, and inoffensive that it practically screamed "I've been sanded down by lots of people to avoid anything that might upset anyone! Why yes, my speaker is in politics." The prose came across, to me anyway, as extraordinarily smooth and with more than a whiff of plastic. Towards the second half, actual hints of personality and emotion started coming through, and I was much more engaged with the person as opposed to the politics.

Subject-wise, there's a lot to be engaged by. Buttigieg is intelligent and thoughtful and I admire his idea of service, and that he's willing to put his money where his mouth is regarding that ideal. Whatever my opinion of the US military and the use to which it's put, it's an inescapable fact that many contemporary US politicians seem far more willing to send it out to fight wars than they are to fight those wars themselves, or to send their own children to fight them. I can't help but think that perhaps there'd be a bit less war if the people responsible for stoking it had to lead from the front, as it were. Buttigieg's military service is only a minor theme here, compared to his focus on civic engagement and the transformation of struggling small city economy, but it reinforces the idea of public service that is much of his apparent motivation. And while I generally agree with his politics, he comes across as a decent guy here as well, and that's mostly because he doesn't seem to ask people to do what he wouldn't do himself.