Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide – The Celebrated Observer's Biography from the Eminent Lives Series

Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide – The Celebrated Observer's Biography from the Eminent Lives Series

Part of the acclaimed Eminent Lives series, Alexis de Tocqueville dissects the legacy of the celebrated cultural observer. Joseph Epstein, distinguished literary historian and author of the bestselling Snobbery: The American Version , provides a fresh account of the celebrated writer’s classic travels in America, and compares what de Tocqueville witnessed to the current state of our nation. Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first foreigners to recognize and trumpet the grandness of the American project. His two-volume classic, Democracy in America , published in 1835, offered not only a vivid account of the still young nation but famously predicted what the nation would become, and firmly established his place in U.S. history. Yet in his own time, Tocqueville had little evidence for the truth of his ideas. Introspective, sickly, prone to self-doubt, he was a most unlikely visionary. In wry, elegant prose, Joseph Epstein, America's most versatile essayist, offers an engaging and altogether human portrait of the Frenchman who would become an American icon. Joseph Epstein is the author of, among other books, Snobbery: The American Version , Fabulous Small Jews (a collection of stories), Envy , and Friendship: An Exposé . He was the editor of The American Scholar between 1974 and 1997, and for many years taught in the English Department at Northwestern University. His essays and stories have appeared in the New Yorker , Commentary , the Atlantic Monthly , and other magazines.