All Formats & Editions

Democracy in America has had the singular honor of being even to this day the work that political commentators of every stripe refer to when they seek to draw large conclusions about the society of the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat,... Read Full Overview

A New Abridgement of a Classic on the American Experiment.

As debates rage over the future of America and the country's relationship to its past, there is no better time to examine the American culture from the perspective of a nineteenth century French... Read Full Overview

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont spent nine months in the U.S. studying American prisons on behalf of the French government. They investigated not just the prison system but indeed every aspect of American public and private life--the political, economic,... Read Full Overview

In 1831, the then twenty-seven year old Alexis de Tocqueville, was sent with Gustave de Beaumont to America by the French Government to study and make a report on the American prison system. Over a period of nine months the two traveled all over America making notes not only... Read Full Overview

Democracy in America examines the democratic revolution Tocqueville believed had been occurring over the previous several hundred years. The primary focus of the book is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States while failing... Read Full Overview

Abridged, with an Introduction by Patrick Renshaw. Democracy in America is a classic of political philosophy. Hailed by John Stuart Mill and Horace Greely as the finest book ever written on the nature of democracy, it continues to be an influential text on both sides of the Atlantic,... Read Full Overview

It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations and an introduction addressing Democracy in America's canonic and iconic place in American life. "Backgrounds" includes seven letters offering Tocqueville's impressions of his nine-and-a-half month journey through the United... Read Full Overview

The first English-language edition published in 1838 and translated by Henry Reeve, Esq. with Preface and notes by John C. Spencer. This landmark work initiated a dialogue about the nature of democracy and the United States and its people that continues to this day. In 1831,... Read Full Overview

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... Read Full Overview

Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville. In the eleven years that separated the Declaration of the Independence of the United States from the completion of that act in the ordination of our written Constitution, the great minds of America were bent upon the study of the... Read Full Overview