Take Three News & Notes
Take Three News & NoTes Minnesotans on the national political stage The fourth volume of the series From America to Norway: Norwegian- The Contest: The 1968 Election and the War for America’s American Immigrant Letters 1838–1914, Soul by Michael Schumacher (Minneapolis: University of Minne- an index, is now available from the sota Press, 2018, 560 p., Cloth, $34.95). Two Minnesotans, Hubert Norwegian- American Historical Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, loom large in the story of the Association, distributed by Univer- presidential election of 1968, a race that author Schumacher sity of Minnesota Press. The first describes as “one of the closest and most bitterly contested in three volumes of letters chronicled American history, conducted against a tumultuous backdrop that the experiences of the great number even today seems impossible.” The Contest is divided into four of Norwegians who left their home- “books,” covering the candidates, the primaries, the conventions, and the election. land for America in the nineteenth Drawing on his research in the Humphrey and McCarthy papers at MNHS, Schum- and early twentieth centuries. Vol- acher describes Humphrey as trapped by his position as vice president and reluctant ume 4 contains the indexes allowing to split from his boss, President Lyndon Johnson, on Vietnam: “He, more than any letters to be discoverable by sender, candidate, had become a symbol of the country itself, a casualty in the war for Ameri- recipient, place of origin, and des- ca’s soul. His plight was in full view during the week of the Democratic National tination. The volume also includes Convention, when McCarthy and his hopes for a new direction were crushed by the a thematic index and an extensive forces of the old politics and Humphrey, as leader of those traditional standards, index of biographical names.
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