Democracy in America

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

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

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

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

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