Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
List: $3.99 | Sale: $2.80
Club: $1.99

Democracy in America

Author: Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop

Narrator: Auto-narrated

Unabridged: 33 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/14/2024

Synopsis

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) came to America in 1831 to see what a great republic was like. What struck him most was the country’s equality of conditions, its democracy. The book he wrote on his return to France, Democracy in America, is both the best ever written on democracy and the best ever written on America. It remains the most often quoted book about the United States, not only because it has something to interest and please everyone, but also because it has something to teach everyone. When it was published in 2000, Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop’s new translation of Democracy in America—only the third since the original two-volume work was published in 1835 and 1840—was lauded in all quarters as the finest and most definitive edition of Tocqueville’s classic thus far. Mansfield and Winthrop have restored the nuances of Tocqueville’s language, with the expressed goal “to convey Tocqueville’s thought as he held it rather than to restate it in comparable terms of today.” The result is a translation with minimal interpretation, but with impeccable annotations of unfamiliar references and a masterful introduction placing the work and its author in the broader contexts of political philosophy and statesmanship.

About Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution. In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in western societies. He also coauthored The U.S. Penitentiary System and Its Application in France with Gustave de Beaumont and penned Recollections, which was published after his death.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Roy on July 19, 2018

I struggle to penetrate God’s point of view, from which vantage point I try to observe and judge human affairs. A few months ago, bored at work and with no other obligations to tie me to New York, I decided that I would look into employment in Europe; and now, several months and an irksome visa p......more

Goodreads review by Russell on June 14, 2013

I don’t mind admitting that Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America is quite possible the most demanding piece of exposition I’ve read since Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind. I suspect it’s one of those books — analogous, if you will, to Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Melville’s Moby Dick, Proust’......more

Goodreads review by William on September 12, 2024

A true classic. Worth reading today as much as ever. Few have put the American experiment into perspective quite like the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited America in 1831 and 1832. A close observer of the young nation, de Tocqueville traveled across the country--coast to......more

Goodreads review by H (no longer expecting notifications) Balikov on June 18, 2019

It amazed me that my country, the USA, was looked on as a democracy worth emulating within its first half century of existence. Though some see Democracy in America as a recounting of travels, and others see it a deconstruction of a foreign country, I think I am with a fair number of others who cons......more

Goodreads review by Paul on July 08, 2024

Democracy in the United States of America has never been an easy or a facile thing. It’s complicated – it has always been complicated – and those realities are singularly well illustrated in the best book ever written about life in the U.S.A. I refer, of course, to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List