Category: History: U.S.: 19th Century

Copyright/published Year: 1996 by Johns Hopkins Univ P

ISBN: 0801855063

Binding: trade Pap

Description: Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835) has become a ì touchstone for almost any discussion of the American polity. ì Taking as its topic the promise and shortcomings of the ì democratic form of government, Tocqueville's great work is at or ì near the root of such political truths as the litigiousness of ì American society, the danger of the "tyranny of the majority," ì the American belief in a small government that intrudes only ì minimally into the daily lives of the citizenry, and Americans' ì love of political debate.

Democracy in America is the work of a 29-year-old nobleman ì who, with his friend Gustave de Beaumont, traveled the breadth of ì Jacksonian America to inquire into the future of French society ì as revolutionary upheaval gave way to a representative government ì similar to America's. In his magisterial Tocqueville in America, ì George Wilson Pierson reconstructs from diaries, letters, and ì newspaper accounts the two Frenchmen's nine-month tour and their ì evolving analysis of American society. We see Tocqueville near ì Detroit, noting the scattered settlement patterns of the frontier ì and the affinity of Americans for solitude; in Boston, witnessing ì the jury system at work; in Philadelphia, observing the ì suffocating moral regimen at the new Eastern State Prison (which ì still stands); and in New Orleans, disturbed by the racial caste ì system and the lassitude of the French-speaking population.

Condition Information

This is a used book and is in ' like new' condition.

Additional condition description

Clean and unmarked. NO remainder marks. Sound, square binding.