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1 month ago | 
nytimes.com | James Traub
CLASS MATTERS: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America's Colleges, by Richard D. KahlenbergIf there is one lesson that centrist Democrats have taken from Donald Trump's startlingly broad-based victory in November, it is that their party will never return to majority status unless it regains the trust of working-class Americans.
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2 months ago | 
newrepublic.com | James Traub
Whoever actually wrote President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on education, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” holds an apocalyptic view of the American classroom.
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Jan 5, 2025 | 
washingtonmonthly.com | James Traub
Our Founding Fathers, who disagreed on so much, were of one mind on the subject of political parties.
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May 1, 2024 | 
wsj.com | James Traub
By As Hubert Humphrey prepared to mount the rostrum of the International Amphitheater in Chicago at 10 p.m. on Aug. 29, 1968 to deliver his address accepting the Democratic nomination for president, the television networks abruptly cut away to footage of National Guardsmen in armored jeeps firing tear gas and swinging their billy clubs at Vietnam War protesters in Grant Park across town.
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Apr 17, 2024 | 
fordhaminstitute.org | James Traub
A few weeks ago, I was sitting in an eleventh-grade history class at a high school in the suburbs west of Chicago. Mr. DiTella was firing off questions about the civil rights movement and getting precious little in return, despite the fact that he had assigned a reading on the subject. When we spoke afterwards, Mr. DiTella complained about how little reading the kids were prepared to do, and how brazenly nonchalant many of them were about handing in written assignments.
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Feb 14, 2024 | 
auburnpub.com | James Traub |Laura McCallum
When I was asked to review "True Believer," my first reaction was: "But I just read another Hubert H. Humphrey book." Samuel Freedman's excellent "Into the Bright Sunshine" should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand Minneapolis' history of racism and antisemitism (among other reasons). But James Traub's "True Believer" has a broader focus. Freedman's book details Humphrey's life from childhood through the 1948 Democratic National Convention speech that put HHH on the map.
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Feb 14, 2024 | 
arcamax.com | James Traub
When I was asked to review "True Believer," my first reaction was: "But I just read another Hubert H. Humphrey book." Samuel Freedman's excellent "Into the Bright Sunshine" should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand Minneapolis' history of racism and antisemitism (among other reasons). But James Traub's "True Believer" has a broader focus. Freedman's book details Humphrey's life from childhood through the 1948 Democratic National Convention speech that put HHH on the map.
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Feb 13, 2024 | 
kirkusreviews.com | James Traub |Stephanie Johnson |Brandon Stanton |
An astute analysis of one of the last New Dealers. A welcome resurrection of the life of an often-forgotten but significant political figure. Veteran journalist Traub, author of What Was Liberalism? and The Freedom Agenda, delivers a memorable, admiring portrait of Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978). Son of a small-town South Dakota pharmacist, Humphrey graduated high school as the class valedictorian.
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Feb 6, 2024 | 
startribune.com | James Traub |Laura McCallum
When I was asked to review "True Believer," my first reaction was: "But I just read another Hubert H. Humphrey book." Samuel Freedman's excellent "Into the Bright Sunshine" should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand Minneapolis' history of racism and antisemitism (among other reasons). But James Traub's "True Believer" has a broader focus. Freedman's book details Humphrey's life from childhood through the 1948 Democratic National Convention speech that put HHH on the map.
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Dec 19, 2023 | 
democracyjournal.org | James Traub
Electoral representation is the double-edged sword of democracy. The ability of millions of citizens to choose proxies for their own will has made modern, nationwide democracy possible, yet it has also reduced the democratic citizen to a passive agent in her nation’s political life. In The Social Contract, Rousseau remarks caustically that the English public “is free only during the election of the members of Parliament.
