A new translation by George Lawrence

Alexis de Tocqueville was a Frenchman who spent most of 1831 traveling in the United States and who wrote a two-volume book about what he learned there. The first volume describes the geography of the North American continent, the political organization of the U.S., the character of the Americans, and the relationships among the Anglo-Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans, among other things.

This is not the type of book that you sit down and read straight through. It took me around three months to get through it in bits and pieces between reading other things. Because of that, this is a difficult review to write. There were parts of it that absolutely bored me to tears, and there were other parts that were quite interesting, especially considering some of the things that are going on in the U.S. today. Overall, I’m glad I read it, and I will read the second volume eventually, but I’ll take a bit of a break first.

And a few quotes for those who are interested:

“A false notion which is clear and precise will always meet with a greater number of adherents in the world than a true principle which is obscure or involved.”

“All the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to a stranger to be so incomprehensible and so puerile that he is at a loss whether to pity a people which takes such arrant trifles in good earnest, or to envy the happiness which enables it to discuss them.”

“The language in which a thought is embodied is the mere carcass of the thought, and not the idea itself.”
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The book's basis was a nine month visit to America by De Tocqueville in 1831, ostensibly to study America's prison system. It was an interesting time to visit America, half-way between the establishment of the constitution and the Civil War. In the course of the visit he met former president John Quincy Adams, then incumbent Andrew Jackson, Senator Daniel Webster and Sam Houston among others. He traveled the length and breath of a country much smaller than what we see on the map now. Before the Mexican-American War and Western expansion and he visited both North and South: New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans.

The book is labelled as both American History and Political Science. De Tocqueville said the first volume was more about America, the second about democracy. The introduction by Mansfield and Winthrop, the translators and editors of the edition I read, called it both the best book on America and the best on democracy. That despite it being written by a French aristocrat--at least by birth although the introduction describes him as a democrat and liberal by conviction.

De Tocqueville says in his own introduction he did not mean to write a "panegyric" to America. He's critical, at times presciently so, of America and democracy both, and doesn't pull his punches about how slavery and racism might pull apart the country. He doesn't hesitate to call slavery "evil" and his depiction of the plight of Native Americans is both insightful and heartbreaking. Surprisingly so, not what I expected from a Westerner writing in the 19th Century. Yet despite some sharp criticisms--and it being written by an outsider, a foreigner, the book has been embraced and quoted by Americans both from the Left and Right. It's said to be commonly assigned in political science courses and I wish some excerpts had been assigned in mine, instead of the execrable People's History by Zinn. De Tocqueville in the end strikes me as much more credible, still relevant and much more thought-provoking about democracy and its faultlines--especially the "tyranny of the majority."

That's not to say this first volume is easy--and this is the more "popular" half of the two volume work. At times I considered giving up on it, slapping a two star rating as too tedious to read. Parts are a slog. I suggest anyone tackling this buy a paperback copy they don't feel hesitant to mark up and highlight and that they take it in short doses. This isn't one of those light, entertaining books. This isn't dessert or junk food. It's a meaty dish; one you chew on and parts can be hard to digest. But the man is brilliant. And it's surprising to me how 200 years later so much resonates in this book and is relevant to contemporary America and its politics. Well worth the effort to anyone interested in democracy or America. ( )

Classic ( )

1825 Democracy in America Volume I, by Alexis de Tocqueville (read 10 Feb 1984) I have long wanted to read this work. Volume I was first published in 1835. The edition I read is called the Henry Reeve Text as revised by Francis Bowen, now further corrected and edited with introduction, editorial notes, and bibliographies by Phillips Bradley. The introduction was written in 1944, and seems as dated as the text. The book is interesting and full of insightful things, but I could not find myself tremendously interested in what it had to say. So I found the reading often a drag, and hard to maintain concentration on. De Tocqueville certainly has some prophetic views therein, but there are also some that are non-prophetic. But he ends up saying the U.S. and Russia each seem "marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe." I will read Volume II, published five years after Volume I, but I don't much look forward to it. ( )

What Tocqueville has to say about the American character is still mostly true, but his observations of our political institutions have been supplanted by the welfare state and our role in world empire. Our loss I think. He is almost silent on state institutions, but has some valid, if now sadly historical, observations on local government. ( )

My edition is dated 1945