Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide

224 Pages·2006·1.2 MB·English

by  Joseph Epstein

A l e x i s
d e T o c q u e v i l l e
Democracy’s Guide
Joseph Epstein
e m i n e n t l i v e s
For Maurice Rosenfi eld
(1914–2005)
Intelligence is the power of seeing things
in the past, present, and future as
they have been, are, and will be.
—George Santayana
Letter to Horace Meyer Kallen, March 15, 1917

Contents
Epigraph iii
Introduction
What would Count Alexis de Tocqueville
(1805–1859), were he alive… 1
Chapter One
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was
born in Paris on… 9
Chapter Two
Tradition would have had Alexis de Tocqueville,
as an aristocrat,… 21
Chapter Three
Tocqueville and Beaumont left for North America
on April 2,… 29
Chapter Four
Toward the end of his visit to America, Alexis de… 47
Chapter Five
The book, published in January 1835, was a
smashing success,… 63
Chapter Six
In the introduction to Democracy in America,
Tocqueville provided a little… 83
Chapter Seven
Even before the reviews were in on his
second volume,… 109
Chapter Eight
Tocqueville won his first official claim to
powers of prophecy… 125
Chapter Nine
Tocqueville spoke of his pleasure in being free of the… 143
Chapter Ten
In 1850, because of a serious breakdown in
his health—… 161
Chapter Eleven
On an August afternoon in Cherbourg in 1850, out for… 183
Epilogue
In his three books, several notebooks, and hundreds
of letters,… 199
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Joseph Epstein
Other Books in the Eminent Lives Series
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Eminent Lives—brief biographies by distinguished authors
on canonical figures—joins a long tradition in this lively form,
from Plutarch’s Lives to Vasari’s Lives of the Painters, Dr. John-
son’s Lives of the Poets to Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians.
Pairing great subjects with writers known for their strong sen-
sibilities and sharp, lively points of view, the Eminent Lives are
ideal introductions designed to appeal to the general reader,
the student, and the scholar. “To preserve a becoming brevity
which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that
is significant,” wrote Strachey: “That, surely, is the fi rst duty of
the biographer.”