Few Americans under age 65 will clearly recall the name Hubert Humphrey, who died in 1978 at age 66 after a landmark career as a U.S. senator, four tortured years as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president, and a 1968 presidential loss to Richard Nixon. Both Samuel Freedman and James Traub are long-distinguished journalists and authors who also qualify as senior citizens; three decades ago this writer reviewed both Freedman’s Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students & Their High School (1990) and Traub’s City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College (1994).
These authors’ two recent books address the same person in decidedly different ways. Freedman’s Into the Bright Sunshine focuses on Humphrey’s life from childhood in small town South Dakota through his election as mayor of Minneapolis to his 1948 national emergence as an unlikely champion of black civil rights at that year’s Democratic…
