"I have always been a stubborn person. And stubborn people can win or lose but they can't float: they emerge or they sink." A very few months after the resounding end of his term, Ignazio Marino has written his truth. An account, harsh and uncensored, that reveals the resistances he found and unveils those that eventually eliminated him; the analysis, point by point, of a season of Rome's government that wanted to mark an absolute change; the memory, moved and grateful, of all those (citizens and aldermen) who participated with him in this adventure and supported him to the end. His vision of a city that can emerge from the swamp and present itself to the world as a great European capital projected into the future. In a tight narrative, full of details about the life and administration of the capital, Marino draws an explosive, but by no means scandalous, portrait of Roman politics and beyond. Perhaps for the first time, a mayor recounts in detail the complexity and urgency of day-to-day decisions, the pressure of influences behind the scenes, the difficulties of making people understand and accept change, the power relations, and the non-meritocratic mechanisms, which he has tried to change, behind so many appointments. Unafraid to name names.