Empowering the Public-Private Partnership: The Future of America’s Local Government. By George Voinovich. Ohio University Press. 2017. ISBN: 9780821422663.  86 pages. Paperback, $19.95.

George Voinovich (1936-2016) enjoyed a distinguished political career, serving as an Ohio state legislator, a county auditor, mayor of Cleveland, governor of Ohio, and, finally, a U.S. senator for two terms. All told, he spent 46 years in public service. In reflecting on such a public life, Voinovich chose not to write a memoir; instead, he wrote a slim volume devoted almost exclusively to his time as mayor of Cleveland (from 1980 to 1989). In Empowering the Public-Private Partnership: The Future of America’s Local Government, Voinovich offers at once an exhortation to public service and a kind of local government policy book advocating partnerships between private corporations and philanthropic foundations, and city government. As a Republican, Voinovich’s nod toward private institutions is not surprising; what is notable is his particular spirit of public service and commitment to the common good. While he does not provide a full autobiography, he gives the reader instead a distillation of that old-school belief that making public institutions work is both positive and necessary work. He hearkens back to a form of conservatism seemingly lost today and presents it in a modest and pragmatic (i.e., Midwestern) way.