Nine years on a city council. I know this world. And I want to say upfront that the chapters covering Ben’s three terms in Clear Lake are the most accurate depiction of local government I’ve come across in any memoir or book about civic life. Not a Hollywood version. Not cleaned up. The actual thing.

The sticky dots on the big sheets of paper during strategic planning sessions — yes. That is literally how it works. The city administrator who already knows which projects can be delayed but waits to see which way the council will move — yes. The newspaper report the next morning that seems like it was written about a different meeting — also yes. I read these chapters nodding the whole way through.

The airport battle is almost a perfect case study in how competing interests play out at the local level. Mason City Airport sends condemnation letters to clear land — including Ben’s aunt and uncle’s house — while simultaneously asking Clear Lake to extend water and sewer for their industrial park, while also asking for marketing money. And Ben makes the motion to deny the marketing money, which is obviously right, but then later votes to extend the utilities anyway because he does the math and it would cost millions more to extend from Mason City. That is exactly the kind of decision that people outside government never understand. The right vote and the satisfying vote are different things and you have to be able to tell them apart.

The ‘Target on My Back’ chapter should be required reading for anyone thinking about running for local office. The pattern he describes — where his votes against a casino, a chicken processing plant, a golf course with a developer who had 47 lawsuits against him, and a housing development on green space, all map directly onto the donation list for his opponent — is not unusual. It’s the ordinary shape of local political corruption. The fact that the bank where his family had kept money since 1934 had six board members backing his opponent is the kind of detail that makes you angry and tired at the same time. I know that feeling.

I also want to mention the Thursdays on Main chapter because it’s a small story that says something true about how progress actually happens in local government. Ben makes the motion because he knows somebody has to absorb the political risk so others can follow. There’s no big speech. He just does the thing, takes the heat, and turns out to be right. Now the event draws seven to eight thousand people a week. That’s how it works when it works.

A few thoughts on the letters section since other reviewers have mentioned it: I actually enjoyed more of the letters than I expected to, particularly the ones directly tied to his council votes — the casino letter, the pool letter, the airport stuff. Where I agree with other readers is that the more general political editorials are harder to sustain as a reading experience when you’re expecting memoir. I think the letters that connect to his personal story should stay exactly where they are. The rest might work better as an appendix so readers who want the full civic document can find it, and readers who want the story can move through without interruption.

One more thing. The chapter about his DUI and craniotomy. That’s the most unexpected and most important chapter in the book, in my opinion. A man who served on a city council, who inspected a new county jail as Councilman Furleigh, finding himself inside that same county system as an inmate, with hands shaking so badly he can’t use a phone — and then the discovery that alcohol was mimicking Parkinson’s symptoms, and surgery, and sobriety — that chapter earns its place. I just wish it had more room. It ends and you’re already at the conclusion and part of you wants to turn back and sit in that chapter for a while longer.

Four stars. A genuine public servant writing honestly about what he actually did. In this environment, that’s rarer than it should be.