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Tocqueville: Democracy in America (Library of America)

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Arthur Goldhammer's translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's classic study of the young United States is - if you'll forgive the word - gorgeous.

To read this is to feel that Tocqueville sits in the room with you. The language is modern and vibrant.

More importantly, the depth of his perception, his understanding of the changes wrought upon his world have never been rendered so clearly. There is no feeling of antiquity to these words: you sense the author's awe and admiration for the American experiment.

It would be a better nation if more thinking people read Tocqueville and I can think of no better translation than this one.

Jerry

Deftly edited by Olivier Zunz (Commonwealth Professor of History, University of Virginia), Democracy In America 1835-40 presents the classic text written by Alexis de Tocqueville in a new English translation by Arthur Goldhammer that smoothly captures the sheen of Tocqueville's literary style while faithfully rendering the depth and scope of his ideas. Tocqueville was a Frenchman who visited the United States in 1831 for nine months, conducting interviews with more than 200 people on American politics, law, and social practices. His reflections on the "great democratic revolution" transforming the Western world are insightful, inspirational, and continue to offer a timeless depth from a seasoned perspective which has been appreciated by generations of historians, academics and scholars for almost 175 years now.

De Tocqueville was simply of one of the great social scientists writing about America and Democracy. From reading the book I deduced that De Tocqueville was a social scientist before Marx! He compares European culture and government with the fledgling culture and democracy he observes in America. He is very much impressed with what he sees taking place in America in the 1830's and hopes it will spread to Europe. He at first believed that America's prosperity was simply due to geography and their distance from powerful neighbors, he abandons this idea after his visit to America. He comes to realize that the West is not being peopled "by new European immigrants to America, but by Americans who he believes have no adversity to taking risks". De Tocqueville comes to see that Americans are the most broadly educated and politically advanced people in the world and one of the reasons for the success of our form of government. He also foretells America's industrial preeminence and strength through the unfettered spread of ideas and human industry.

De Tocqueville also saw the insidious damage that the institution of slavery was causing the country and predicted some 30 years before the Civil War that slavery would probable cause the states to fragment from the union. He also the emergence of stronger states rights over the power of the federal government. He held fast to his belief that the greatest danger to democracy was the trend toward the concentration of power by the federal government. He predicted wrongly that the union would probably break up into 2 or 3 countries because of regional interests and differences. This idea is the only one about America that he gets wrong. Despite some of his misgivings, De Tocqueville, saw that democracy is an "inescapable development" of the modern world. The arguments in the "Federalist Papers" were greater than most people realized. He saw a social revolution coming that continues throughout the world today.

De Tocqueville realizes at the very beginning of the "industrial revolution" how industry, centralization and democracy strengthened each other and moved forward together. I am convinced that De Tocqueville is still the preeminent observer of America but is also the father of social science. A must read for anyone interested in American history, political philosophy or the social sciences.

Tocqueville needs no introduction. Democracy in America is simply the best work American polity ever. Goldhammer's translation makes it better that it ever has been. The translation is eloquent and flowing, as Tocqueville's original French was.

This version is worth the extra money.

This Library of America edition (Goldhammer, trans.) is the best available English translation. Goldhammer has elsewhere pointed out the many subtle but often crucial errors in earlier versions.

Tocqueville's classic study of America has become such a staple of the western canon that it is hard to believe it was written by a man in his late twenties and early thirties after only one visit of approximately nine months to the United States, from 1831-1832. The greatest part of that time was spent in three large eastern cities - on a mission that was to some extent pretextual, namely, examining American penal institutions. (Interestingly, it was also in 1831 that another youthful and well-born European, Charles Darwin, took to the sea and made of his observations from that journey the basis for a life's work, also attended by substantial renown.)

Tocqueville had a particularly useful background for such an undertaking: his father was a government official and an aristocrat. Tocqueville himself was trained as a lawyer. He also had a splendid intellect, a sensitive disposition, a knack for finding and interviewing people who would become important later on, and an aptitude for listening carefully and recording his impressions in detail. Moreover, he was - like Darwin - profoundly thoughtful when it came to analyzing and distilling the materials he collected, a process he underwent twice - once for each of the two volumes that comprise this work. It bears mention that he was highly ambitious, as befitted his lineage, and yearned for fame, which he obtained largely because of this book, as opposed to fortune, which he already had.

During a trip that led them to Ohio, Niagara Falls, Canada and New Orleans, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia and Boston, as well as the nation's capital, Tocqueville and his friend Gustav de Beaumont encountered the travails of travel by wagon, stagecoach, canoe and steamboat, sometimes with hair-raising results. The two spent a fortnight in the wilderness, were snowbound in a crude log cabin where a glass of water left for five minutes turned to ice, visited a Shaker congregation, nearly drowned when their steamboat struck ice in a river, saw some of the evils of slavery close up, and witnessed part of the relocation of Native Americans from the South to the West. Tocqueville was particularly moved by finding a volume of Shakespeare in a pioneer cabin where he felt transported while reading "Henry V." The moral and cultural impressions these circumstances made on Tocqueville led him to open a window that lets us see some of the remarkable early history of the country from the perspective of a sympathetic but still detached observer.

Some readers may think it curious that a work originally written in French should be included in the Library of America series. But in more than one way, Tocqueville straddled two worlds, to borrow from the eminent Tocqueville expert and student of political systems, Sheldon S. Wolin. Besides owing allegiance to France where he lived most of his life (though he traveled widely to other countries besides America), he felt an almost moral commitment to and honorary citizenship in America. In a letter he wrote in 1856, he referred to himself as "half Yankee." Tocqueville was also well aware that the aristocratic order from which he came was fading and that democracy and its concomitant (indeed, its precondition), equality, were on the ascent. Thus, he saw these worlds in comparative terms, and was both judicious and acute in analyzing his perceptions. His study met with instantaneous popularity: John Stuart Mill ventured to contact Tocqueville and the two became friends. He was even compared to Montesquieu. In an introduction to an American edition, John C. Spencer, a lawyer and politician who had entertained and spoken at length with Tocqueville and Beaumont, declared that Tocqueville had written a better study of America than anyone, including Americans themselves.

The other reviews deal with Tocqueville appropriately and I do not venture to add much to what has already been said. Given that there are several other translations competing for our dollars and attention, it would have been helpful, however, if some reviewers had commented on the relative merits of the respective translations instead of only raining fulsome praise on this one. Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have relied on the 2004 Winthrop-Mansfield translation. The Norton Critical Edition of this work relies on the venerable Reeve translation. Clearly there is reason for educated people to disagree.

Having four translations of "Democracy in America" myself, I am inclined to consult different ones from time to time, especially when peculiarities or passages that seem especially critical, complex or opaque come along, in order to get a sense of where the "center of gravity" is among the various versions. I think this is important. To take one small but piquant instance, the Reeve translation of the title for Vol. II, Part 2, Chapter XII, refers to Americans manifesting a "fanatical" spiritualism, while two others (Bevan, Winthrop-Mansfield) call it "exalted" and yet another (Goldhammer) uses "impassioned." The difference is fascinating and may prompt one to resort to the original French texts and a French-English dictionary to see what French word(s) Tocqueville used and how else it (they) might be translated nowadays, since most of us are not likely to have ready access to a French-English dictionary from the 1830's.

I agree with most of the other reviewers that Goldhammer's is the most mellifluous prose. It does not read like a translation at all. I am not sure I would go so far as to say "To read this is to feel that Tocqueville sits in the room with you." That seems a bit overwrought. Likewise, it sounds like thoughtless rhapsodizing to say "More importantly, the depth of his perception, his understanding of the changes wrought upon his world have never been rendered so clearly." Tocqueville's perception, understanding, and so on have indeed been rendered much more clearly - in the original French. That much should be obvious, notwithstanding the merits of this or any other translation. But that is the whole reason it is important to discover and compare translations - because Tocqueville's writing, while rendered clearly by different translators, still remains, in all its various nuances, beyond the grasp of those not fluent in French.

Certainly Tocqueville felt admiration for the American experiment, not awe. Still, his sentiments were hardly unalloyed, as this book and his other writings make abundantly clear. (See especially the letters he wrote after 1840, recently translated into English.) Toqueville saw much to admire here and also much to regret. After all, he was comparing an emerging democratic order with fading aristocracies, and, commendably, he appreciated the merits and drawbacks of each system. Thus, while he lamented the overwhelmingly mercenary inclination of Americans, he also admired their restless energy and the diverse system of government that led such individualists to come together in order to achieve common purposes. To his credit, then, Tocqueville's account is balanced and measured. Those are some of the qualities that make it great.

Among the advantages of this edition is that it includes Tocqueville's notes, a chronology, and scholarly notes by the editor (Olivier Zunz) and the translator. It is also a relatively slender, yet unabridged book, which means it is easy to hold and read, especially by contrast with the Winthrop-Mansfield version, which is larger and somewhat cumbersome. While there are certainly real advantages to each of the other translations of "Democracy in America," Goldhammer's prose is so natural and clear that it's easy to become absorbed in the book before you know it.

If you like Tocqueville, and others have commented that he is at once objective and detached while seeming to speak directly to the reader, there is a wealth of excellent literature by and about him, though only some of it is available in English. (My edition of the Reeve-Bowen-Bradley edition includes an extensive, albeit very dated, bibliography of works in English, French, Italian, and German. Most date from the 1800's.) George Wilson Pierson wrote a substantial tome in 1938, reprinted by Johns Hopkins in 1996, called "Tocqueville in America," which presents a rich and thorough discussion of the travels of Tocqueville and Beaumont during the time they were in America, and of the preparation of "Democracy in America." This is the more interesting because of the people and adventures the two travelers encountered here. For instance, they spoke with Joseph Story, Salmon P. Chase, and John McLean, all of whom were or became justices of the United States Supreme Court and all of whom provided substantial expertise concerning the American legal system and government. They also met for about half an hour with President Jackson; neither side seems to have been much impressed with the other. Sam Houston at first shocked them as very rustic for a former governor, though ultimately they came to admire his intelligence and his sensitivity to the plight of the Indians - a sensitivity Tocqueville shared. The most impressive American they met, however, was John Quincy Adams, who had ended his one term as President and was on his way to representing Massachusetts in Congress. Adams was one of the most perspicacious observers of the American situation and foresaw that slavery would indeed end but only after a major war had intervened. Tocqueville even contributed a short but passionate comment to an abolitionist publication after he returned to France.

Once back in France, Tocqueville carried on correspondence with a number of prominent Americans, including Edward Everett, Charles Sumner, Theodore Sedgwick III, Richard Rush, Henry D. Gilpin, George Bancroft, William H. Prescott, and William Alexander Duer. His correspondence after 1840 has been collected and translated by Jeremy Jennings and Aurelian Craiutu in a volume published by Oxford in 2009. This period reflects a time leading up to his death when Tocqueville was growing disillusioned with America, France, and his own life. His letters from those years have been suggested as the basis for a possible "third volume" of "Democracy in America."

Besides Pierson's book, there is a newer and much shorter volume by Leo Damrosch (FSG 2010)called "Tocqueville's Discovery of America," that covers much of the same ground as Pierson's, though in far less depth. Sheldon S. Wolin's analysis, "Tocqueville Between Two Worlds," (Princeton 2001) is justly regarded as penetrating and well-written - probably the best analysis of Tocqueville in the last two or three score years. Tocqueville went on to write a classic history about France, "The Old Regime and the Revolution," which he could not complete before his death at 53. It will be of interest to people who want to know more about Tocqeuville's perspective on his own country and his evolution as a political theorist. There is a comprehensive biography of Tocqueville in French by Andre Jardin (FSG 1988), which has been translated into English. Hugh Brogan also wrote a biography in English (Yale 2006) that is thorough and well-done (and not as dry as Jardin's).

Tocqueville immersed himself in the life of this country when he and America were both young, confident, and energetic. Many of his observations will strike the reader as acute, even strikingly prophetic. His wide-ranging insights will abundantly reward reading and re-reading, on his own terms. I say that to make clear that there is a school of polemicists who yank passages from Tocqueville for their own tendentious purposes. This is unfair to the man and his work. Tocqueville deserves the same kind of thoughtful and balanced consideration from us that he gave to our nation at a time when it was still young.

While I was delighted with Tocqueville's masterpiece per se, it's necessary to emphasize that this particular edition is superb. First, the translation is in good, fluid style; second, it is unabridged, which is essential; and third, because it included the notes and map. I have read abridged editions and found them uninteresting because the analytical digressions were cut off. Please don't be daunted by the great length of this edition; I found it a surprisingly fast read.

It's not terribly original to rave about the excellence of Tocqueville's work; even those who disagree with his worldview find his way of expressing it both stimulating and very useful for solidifying their own opinions. Tocqueville, moreover, is very good at using classical methods of dialectical philosophy to explain why one would expect certain conditions to prevail in the United States, given other circumstances that obtain.

Having just read much of the political philosophy of Plato, plus Bertrand Russell's criticism of it, I would say that a commonly-overlooked merit of Tocqueville's work--particularly Book I--is that it serves as a dialectic alternative to the Platonic tradition of political philosophy. Plato used an ingenious approach of leading questions and deductive responses to argue that society required a firm structure with permanent, ergo ultraconservative, institutions. The object was to preserve high-mindedness and public spiritedness, which for Plato and the great majority of Western political philosophers since him, meant a caste society with equality within each class. Both features, plus the absolute devotion to warfare and martial glory (on the part of the guardians) naturally militated against liberty.

Writers since Plato, such as Filmer, applied variants of this political philosophy to more recent societies, usually relaxing Plato's corollary hostility to new technologies: modern technology tended to facilitate state coercion, and experience with egalitarianism amongst classes--as, for example, in revolutionary battlefields--suggested that it was not essential, or even helpful, for suppressing class struggle. Tocqueville's insight was to apply a dialectic of liberty to the experience of democracies in general and the United States in particular (he distinguishes firmly between the two; France after the July [1830] revolution was, for example, more democratic than before, and the like was true for the UK after the 1832 Reform Act). Oddly, he regards the USA as distinguished mainly by the high degree of EQUALITY he saw there, rather than democracy; he regards the latter as having the far more decisive impact on the formation of social mores, and hence, of living conditions.

I said Tocqueville offers a dialectic alternative to Plato's caste-oligarchy. He is dialectic in the sense that he organizes the book in many short chapters, each proposing a question about the peculiar Usonian national character (e.g., why is American patriotism so captious? Why are American attitudes so conformist?). The succession of questions is not truly dialectic, insofar as they are not, strictly speaking, interrelated, as a Platonic dialogue would be; however, Tocqueville does rely on deductive reasoning to explain what he has observed, and, much the way Socrates was supposed to have deduced the immortality of the soul and its survival into the next life, so Tocqueville makes some startlingly accurate predictions about the future of the United States.

Tocqueville's general view of the USA is startlingly favorable, particularly for a European observer; but it includes much criticism, some of it harsh. In particular, he finds conformity of opinions and the tyranny of the majority almost unendurable; slavery he attacks lightly (France still had slavery in 1835, and the UK began phasing out slavery in 1834; abolition was still a sore point amongst the colonial powers), but his prognosis of race relations is extremely bleak. He never includes the words, "America is great, because it is good" (that appears to have originated with either Gerald Ford in March '76 or with Eisenhower, to whom Ford attributed the remark); it's pretty clear that Tocqueville was not prone to such fatuous simplification. He does, however, regard the problems of democracy in the United States as generally easier to mitigate and live with, than the residual problems of autocracy in Europe. He also regards the emergence of democracy as inevitable.

I constantly use Democracy in America as a reference guide. Tocqueville's essays on the dangers of a pure democracy and how Americans relate to their government is as relevant today as it was in the 1800s. Tocqueveille brings forward a broad range of themes, his essays on these themes provide evidence he was an uncanny journalist and poltical analyst, a rare trait in one person. Its amazing that one person could learn so much in one 9 month trip!

The reader not only gets an unmatched history lesson on the effects our founding had on America circa-Jacksonian times, his his genius analysis of that history provides perspective on the strengths of having a democratic republic where liberty reigns rather a pure democracy mutating into tyranny that are just as true today.

As for editions, I much prefer the Folio Society publication because its easier to quickly find releveant subject matter and the quality of binding materials meets the standard of excellence of the author. For a book you'll cherish the rest of your life, I recommend buying the best quality publication you can.

During this year I have been making my way through the wonderful Democracy in America By Alexis de Tocqueville.

He published the book in 2 volumes ( 1835, 1840 ).

The 1st Volume is the more scholarly of the 2 what with its discussion of history, politics, and more, being butressed with statistics, and quotes galore.

The 2nd volume is the the more philosophical of the 2 as the author delves into all sorts of issues, and subjects related to the society, culture, religion, politics, and more, of America, and is far from shy about expressing not only his philosophy, but his thoughts on the philosophies of the people of the United States.

That brings me to just one aspect of this book that is relevant today:

In the last 25 years religious belief has played a significant role in the shaping of American politics, and the so-called Culture Wars.

I'm not the most religious person around, despite the variety of beliefs practiced by various relatives I've lived around all my life, but that does not mean that I don't find the subject interesting , and learn much from reading books, articles, and Blogs of a religious nature.

In light of recent debates in the media, from the battle over religion on school, and college, campuses, Creationism vs. Evolution in our schools, to the ACLU's war against All Things Christmas, I found a chapter in Volume 2 of particular interest, along with a startling paragraph comparing Islam & Christianity that is very relevant to the America of today, and the last 25 years.

Powerful, thought provoking, writing of a sort rarely surpassed since, and reason enough for thoughtful people, interested in the future of our nation to consider reading this still relevant book.

This book is long, and certainly not light reading; however, although I have always been a fan of history and enjoy learning about my country I learned more in the first 45 pages than from many of the history classes I had in high school and college. This is an excellent book that will really open your eyes to not only the founding of our nation, but it's influences, variety of culture and beliefs and the origin of American politics, law and structure. This is well worth the cost of the book and would be an excellent reference for any student or history lover. One of the best books in my large collection.