democracy in america · tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, toured the United States in 1831 and published his two volumes in 1835 and 1840 to explain what democracy, which he took to be inevitable, would mean. He found equality of conditions shaping everything, praised township government, associations and religion, and warned of individualism, the tyranny of the majority and a soft despotism.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, edited by Sanford Kessler and translated by Stephen D. Grant (Hackett Publishing, 2000). Read over two sessions, Junior Fall at Torrey Honors.