Theodore Chasseriau, Alexis de Tocqueville, 1850. via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Library of America
Democracy in America
The best book ever written about America, by a Frenchman.
$40.00
Available · worldwide delivery
- Author
- Alexis de Tocqueville; trans. Arthur Goldhammer
- Publisher
- Library of America
- Published
- January 2004
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Hardcover
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
Equality Was the Thing to Watch
Alexis de Tocqueville spent nine months of 1831 travelling the United States, officially to study its prisons, actually to study the first full experiment in equality of condition. The two volumes he published in 1835 and 1840 treat democracy not as a constitution but as a way of life, and his observations, on township government, on voluntary associations, on the quiet pressure of majority opinion, have been quoted by every generation of Americans since, usually against each other.
The Library of America edition presents Arthur Goldhammer's 2004 translation, made directly for American readers from the French. Tocqueville admired the republic and worried for it in the same paragraph, which is why the book has never dated; each era finds its own anxieties already described.
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