This engaging account of political initiation, campaigns, and service in elected offices of increasing responsibility will interest and entertain a wide range of readers. Ackermann's experience as Mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers important lessons for the political volunteer and insights for the student of politics. It is a rich resource for teachers of government, urban politics, and public administration. Through the author's eyes we see the issues, the problems, and the people that make a modern city so vital and diverse a place, and its leadership and management so delicate and complex an undertaking.

Barbara Ackermann's engaging account of her years as a city politician in Cambridge shows how elected and appointed officials and civil servants work together as they grapple with issues voters want action on, deal with political fights for positions of power, and cope with outside forces, such as the anti-war riots and protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The events and people portrayed in this volume represent the best and the worst of local government. "Education of a Mayor" not only recounts how one elected official learned her job, it also reveals much about how the system can work and describes what happens when it doesn't work.