Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide

Part of the acclaimed Eminent Lives series, Alexis de Tocqueville dissects the legacy of the celebrated cultural observer. Joseph Epstein, distinguished literary historian and author of the bestselling Snobbery: The American Version, provides a fresh account of the celebrated writer’s classic travels in America, and compares what de Tocqueville witnessed to the current state of our nation. |

Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first foreigners to recognize and trumpet the grandness of the American project. His two-volume classic, Democracy in America, published in 1835, offered not only a vivid account of the still young nation but famously predicted what the nation would become, and firmly established his place in U.S. history. Yet in his own time, Tocqueville had little evidence for the truth of his ideas. Introspective, sickly, prone to self-doubt, he was a most unlikely visionary. In wry, elegant prose, Joseph Epstein, America's most versatile essayist, offers an engaging and altogether human portrait of the Frenchman who would become an American icon.