Author: Leo Damrosch
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429945737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece, Democracy in America, was the product of a young man's open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. In Tocqueville's Discovery of America, the prizewinning biographer Leo Damrosch retraces Tocqueville's nine-month journey through the young nation in 1831–1832, illuminating how his enduring ideas were born of imaginative interchange with America and Americans, and painting a vivid picture of Jacksonian America. Damrosch shows that Tocqueville found much to admire in the dynamism of American society and in its egalitarian ideals. But he was offended by the ethos of grasping materialism and was convinced that the institution of slavery was bound to give rise to a tragic civil war. Drawing on documents and letters that have never before appeared in English, as well as on a wide range of scholarship, Tocqueville's Discovery of America brings the man, his ideas, and his world to startling life.
Author: George Wilson Pierson
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801855061
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1764
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Book Description
Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, traveled the breadth of America to inquire into the future of French society as revolutionary upheaval gave way to a representative government similar to America's. This text reconstructs from their diaries and letters and newspaper accounts their nine-month tour and evolving analysis of American society.
Author: James T. Schleifer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226737055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
One of the greatest books ever to be written on the United States, Democracy in America continues to find new readers who marvel at the lasting insights Alexis de Tocqueville had into our nation and its political culture. The work is, however, as challenging as it is important; its arguments can be complex and subtle, and its sheer length can make it difficult for any reader, especially one coming to it for the first time, to grasp Tocqueville’s meaning. The Chicago Companion to Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” is the first book written expressly to help general readers and students alike get the most out of this seminal work. Now James T. Schleifer, an expert on Tocqueville, has provided the background and information readers need in order to understand Tocqueville’s masterwork. In clear and engaging prose, Schleifer explains why Democracy in America is so important, how it came to be written, and how different generations of Americans have interpreted it since its publication. He also presents indispensable insight on who Tocqueville was, his trip to America, and what he meant by equality, democracy, and liberty. Drawing upon his intimate knowledge of Tocqueville’s papers and manuscripts, Schleifer reveals how Tocqueville’s ideas took shape and changed even in the course of writing the book. At the same time, Schleifer provides a detailed glossary of key terms and key passages, all accompanied by generous citations to the relevant pages in the University of Chicago Press Mansfield/Winthrop translation. TheChicago Companion will serve generations of readers as an essential guide to both the man and his work.
Author: Anne Bentzel
Publisher: C-Span
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont's travels in America in 1831-32 have been retold by C-SPAN. For nine months, the cable TV network retraced the Frenchmen's journey, featuring programming from cities along the route. Now the Tocqueville rediscovery continues with the publication of this unique guide-book. Comprising 47 brief chapters covering cities and small towns that Tocqueville visited, the book allows readers to hear Tocqueville's words while following in his footsteps. Chapters include descriptions of cities and towns, excerpts of what Tocqueville wrote about them, accounts of what Tocqueville and Beaumont did there and details about sights that can be seen today. The book provides telephone numbers and addresses of visitors bureaus, general directions and comparisons of the towns as they are today with what they were like in Tocqueville's era. Traveling Tocqueville's America is the perfect companion for armchair traveler and tourist alike.
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education
ISBN: 1319242553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
This new edition of Democracy in America makes Tocqueville’s classic nineteenth-century study of American politics, society, and culture available — finally! — in a brief and accessible version. Designed for instructors who are eager to teach the work but reluctant to assign all 700 plus pages, Kammen’s careful abridgment features the most well-known chapters that by scholarly consensus are most representative of Tocqueville’s thinking on a wide variety of issues. A comprehensive introduction provides historical and intellectual background, traces the author’s journey in America, helps students unpack the meaning behind key Tocquevillian concepts like "individualism," "equality," and "tyranny of the majority," and discusses the work’s reception and legacy. Newly translated, this edition offers instructors a convenient and affordable option for exploring this essential work with their students. Useful pedagogic features include a chronology, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, illustrations, and an index.
Author: Arthur Kaledin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521859557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577
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Book Description
Tocqueville on America after 1840 provides access to Tocqueville's views on American politics from 1840 to 1859, revealing his shift in thinking and growing disenchantment with America.
Author: Daniel R. Ernst
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199920869
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Between 1900 and 1940, Americans confronted a puzzle: how could administrative agencies address the nation's troubles without violating individual liberty? From the close reasoning of judges, the self-interest of lawyers, and the machinations of politicians, an answer emerged. 'Judicialize' agencies' procedures, and a 'rule of lawyers' would keep America free.
Author: James T. Schleifer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780865972049
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
It is impossible fully to understand the American experience apart from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Moreover, it is impossible fully to appreciate Tocqueville by assuming that he brought to his visitation to America, or to the writing of his great work, a fixed philosophical doctrine. James T. Schleifer documents where, when, and under what influences Tocqueville wrote different sections of his work. In doing so, Schleifer discloses the mental processes through which Tocqueville passed in reflecting on his experiences in America and transforming these reflections into the most original and revealing book ever written about Americans. For the first time the evolution of a number of Tocqueville's central themes--democracy, individualism, centralization, despotism--emerges into clear relief. As Russell B. Nye has observed, "Schleifer's study is a model of intellectual history, an account of the intertwining of a man, a set of ideas, and the final product, a book." The Liberty Fund second edition includes a new preface by the author and an epilogue, "The Problem of the Two Democracies." James T. Schleifer is Professor of History and Director of the Gill Library at the College of New Rochelle
Author: Bernard-Henri Lévy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307430626
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be today? To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling throughout the country in the footsteps of another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America remains the most influential book ever written about our country. The result is American Vertigo, a fascinating, wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa, Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball), the prison system, the “return of ideology” and the health of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits and updates Tocqueville’s most important beliefs, such as the dangers posed by “the tyranny of the majority,” explores what Europe and America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist’s eye and a philosopher’s depth. Through powerful interview-based portraits across the spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a tapestry of American voices–some wise, some shocking. Both the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge throughout, from the crucial choices America faces today to the underlying reality that, unlike the “Old World,” America remains the fulfillment of the world’s desire to worship, earn, and live as one wishes–a place, despite all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an actual practice. At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the meaning of America.
