Sarah Thomas evaluates Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in light of the American Founding’s 250th anniversary, emphasizing two underappreciated themes: democracy as providential and conducive to ...

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) was neither a systematic thinker nor a system builder, neither a philosopher nor a historian. His subject was society—make that societies, their strengths and their ...

Alexis de Tocqueville never wrote about Japan, but his warnings about democracy, centralization, and soft despotism found an ...

Art and History, Downtown, Uptown, and Is That a Ghost at Jumel Terrace? Who Cares If Homer Nodded? Wall Street’s Revolutionary War How the American Right Went European Newsflash! People Have Actually ...

The title of Olivier Zunz’s biography of Alexis de Tocqueville—“The Man Who Understood Democracy”—would appear to be a direct appeal to readers who believe democracy is, to use one popular formulation ...

“Americans are so enamored of equality they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” (Alexis de Tocqueville) Alexis de Tocqueville was a French political philosopher who visited the ...

Who Cares If Homer Nodded? Wall Street’s Revolutionary War How the American Right Went European Newsflash! People Have Actually Never Lived in Harmony Walk in Benjamin Harrison’s Footsteps for Gilded ...

Editor; In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French lawyer, visited our country and observed our emerging form of government. His analysis was later published in “Democracy in America” (1835 and ...

There has never been much written on Tocqueville's wife. (Flickr/ C Smith) For good reason, there is a never-ending literature about Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, which Harvey ...

Alexis de Tocqueville warned us that democracy can turn against freedom. The public/private divide that long grounded our consensus liberal regime has begun to be replaced. In the public and private ...

Alexis de Tocqueville, the author of "Democracy in America," is seen in this charcoal portrait. (Théodore Chassériau/Liszt Collection/Newscom) Perhaps the best book about America was not written by an ...