Pete Buttigieg demonstrates how a breakdown of trust is central to our nation’s current predicament—and how our future depends on finding ways to instill confidence in the American project, and in each other.

Trust is the essential foundation of America’s democracy, asserts Pete Buttigieg, former presidential candidate and bestselling author of Shortest Way Home. In a century shaped by terrorism, financial collapse, Trumpist populism, global pandemic, and systemic racism, trust—in our government, corporations, experts, and, most tragically, in one another—has precipitously eroded and, for so many, never existed in the first place. Recognizing that we are now experiencing disastrous consequences, the former South Bend mayor offers a direct reckoning with the corruption of social responsibility, interweaving history, political philosophy, and affecting passages of memoir, offering a new outlook for how we can confront the next decade’s challenges by building accountability. In this urgent work, Buttigieg confirms his status as a visionary political thinker.