Search results for ""author alexis de tocqueville""

This classic analysis of America’s unique political character is quoted heavily by politicians and perennially pops up on history professors’ reading lists. The enduring appeal of Democracy in America lies in the eloquent, prophetic voice of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), a French aristocrat who visited the United States in 1831. A thoughtful young man in a still-young country, he succeeded in penning this penetrating study of America’s people, culture, history, geography, politics, legal system, and economy. Tocqueville asserts, “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress.” As Bruce Frohnen notes in his introduction to this edition, this republication of Henry Reeve’s “important translation” beautifully showc

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In what remains after more than a century the greatest study of American political life, Tocqueville describes American society and accounts for its nature and its conflicts in an historical analysis of the nation's origins among different parties of European settlers. Brilliantly written and vividly illustrated with vignettes and portraits, this is also more than an exploration of one society at one time. Tocqueville's assessment of America is as relevant as it ever was, and his explanation of how democratic societies work can illuminate our own nation now.

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American Institutions by Alexis De Tocqueville has attracted great attention throughout Europe, where it is universally regarded as a sound, philosophical, impartial, and remarkably clear and distinct view of our political institutions, and of our manners, opinions, and habits, as influencing or influenced by those institutions. Writers, reviewers, and statesmen of all parties, have united in the highest commendations of its ability and integrity. The people, described by a work of such a character, should not be the only one in Christendom unacquainted with its contents. At least, so thought many of our most distinguished men, who have urged the publishers of this edition to reprint the work, and present it to the American public. They have done so in the hope of promoting among their countrymen a more thorough knowledge of their frames of government, and a more just appreciation of the great principles on which they are founded.

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The Ancien Régime and the Revolution is a comparison of revolutionary France and the despotic rule it toppled. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) is an objective observer of both periods – providing a merciless critique of the ancien régime, with its venality, oppression and inequality, yet acknowledging the reforms introduced under Louis XVI, and claiming that the post-Revolution state was in many ways as tyrannical as that of the King; its once lofty and egalitarian ideals corrupted and forgotten. Writing in the 1850s, Tocqueville wished to expose the return to despotism he witnessed in his own time under Napoleon III, by illuminating the grand, but ultimately doomed, call to liberty made by the French people in 1789. His eloquent and instructive study raises questions about liberty, nationalism and justice that remain urgent today.

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After completing his research for Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville turned to the French consolidation of its empire in North Africa, which he believed deserving of similar attention. Tocqueville began studying Algerian history and culture, making two trips to Algeria in 1841 and 1846. He quickly became one of France's foremost experts on the country and wrote essays, articles, official letters, and parliamentary reports on such diverse topics as France's military and administrative policies in North Africa, the people of the Maghrib, his own travels in Algeria, and the practice of Islam. Throughout, Tocqueville consistently defended the French imperial project, a position that stands in tension with his admiration for the benefits of democracy he witnessed in America. Although Tocqueville never published a book-length study of French North Africa, his various writings on the subject provide as invaluable a portrait of French imperialism as Democracy in America does of the Early Republic period in American history. In Writings on Empire and Slavery, Jennifer Pitts has selected and translated nine of his most important dispatches on Algeria, which offer startling new insights into both Tocqueville's political thought and French liberalism's attitudes toward the political, military, and moral aspects of France's colonial expansion. The volume also includes six articles Tocqueville wrote during the same period calling for the emancipation of slaves in France's Caribbean colonies.

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This new abridged translation of Democracy in America reflects the rich Tocqueville scholarship of the past forty years, and restores chapters central to Tocqueville's analysis absent from previous abridgments—including his discussions of enlightened self-interest and the public's influence on ethical standards. Judicious notes and a thoughtful Introduction offer aids to the understanding of a masterpiece of nineteenth-century social thought that continues in our own day to illuminate debates about the roles of liberty and equality in American life.

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The collection includes new translations of Tocqueville's works, including the first English translation of his Second Memoir, the original Memoir, a letter fragment considering pauperism in Normandy, and the ‘‘Pauperism in America’’ index to the Penitentiary Report. Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth century, and his thought continues to influence contemporary political and social discourse. In Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings, Christine Dunn Henderson brings all of Tocqueville’s writings on poverty together for the first time: a new translation of his original Memoir and the first English translation of his unfinished Second Memoir, as well as his letter considering pauperism in Normandy and the ‘‘Pauperism in America’’ appendix to his Penitentiary Report. By uniting these texts in a single volume, Henderson makes possible a deeper exploration of Tocqueville’s thought as it pertains to questions of inequality and public assistance. As Henderson shows in her introduction to this collection, Tocqueville provides no easy blueprint for fixing these problems, which remain pressing today. Still, Tocqueville’s writings speak eloquently about these issues, and his own unsuccessful struggle to find solutions remains both a spur to creative thinking today and a caution against attempting to find simplistic remedies. Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings allows us to study his sustained thought on pauperism, poverty assistance, governmental assistance programs, and social inequality in a new and deeper way. The insights in these works are important not only for what they tell us about Tocqueville but also for how they help us to think about contemporary social challenges. This collection will be essential not only to students and scholars of Tocqueville’s thought, nineteenth-century France, and political economy, but also to all those interested in the issues of public assistance, associative life, voluntary associations, and charities.

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The collection includes new translations of Tocqueville's works, including the first English translation of his Second Memoir, the original Memoir, a letter fragment considering pauperism in Normandy, and the ‘‘Pauperism in America’’ index to the Penitentiary Report. Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth century, and his thought continues to influence contemporary political and social discourse. In Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings, Christine Dunn Henderson brings all of Tocqueville’s writings on poverty together for the first time: a new translation of his original Memoir and the first English translation of his unfinished Second Memoir, as well as his letter considering pauperism in Normandy and the ‘‘Pauperism in America’’ appendix to his Penitentiary Report. By uniting these texts in a single volume, Henderson makes possible a deeper exploration of Tocqueville’s thought as it pertains to questions of inequality and public assistance. As Henderson shows in her introduction to this collection, Tocqueville provides no easy blueprint for fixing these problems, which remain pressing today. Still, Tocqueville’s writings speak eloquently about these issues, and his own unsuccessful struggle to find solutions remains both a spur to creative thinking today and a caution against attempting to find simplistic remedies. Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings allows us to study his sustained thought on pauperism, poverty assistance, governmental assistance programs, and social inequality in a new and deeper way. The insights in these works are important not only for what they tell us about Tocqueville but also for how they help us to think about contemporary social challenges. This collection will be essential not only to students and scholars of Tocqueville’s thought, nineteenth-century France, and political economy, but also to all those interested in the issues of public assistance, associative life, voluntary associations, and charities.

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This new abridged translation of Democracy in America reflects the rich Tocqueville scholarship of the past forty years, and restores chapters central to Tocqueville's analysis absent from previous abridgments—including his discussions of enlightened self-interest and the public's influence on ethical standards. Judicious notes and a thoughtful Introduction offer aids to the understanding of a masterpiece of nineteenth-century social thought that continues in our own day to illuminate debates about the roles of liberty and equality in American life.

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Alexis de Tocqueville possessed one of the most fertile sociological imaginations of the nineteenth century. For more than 120 years, his uncanny predictive insight has continued to fascinate thinkers, and his writings have continued to influence our interpretations of history and society. His analyses of many issues remain relevant to current social and political problems. In this volume John Stone and Stephen Mennell bring together for the first time selections from the full range of Tocqueville's writings, selections that illustrate the depth of his insight and analysis.

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The Old Regime and the Revolution is Alexis de Tocqueville's great meditation on the origins and meanings of the French Revolution. One of the most profound and influential studies of this pivotal event, it remains a relevant and stimulating discussion of the problem of preserving individual and political freedom in the modern world. Alan Kahan's translation provides a faithful, readable rendering of Tocqueville's last masterpiece, and it includes notes and variants which reveal Tocqueville's sources and include excerpts from his drafts and revisions. The introduction by France's most eminent scholars of Tocqueville and the French Revolution, Francoise Melonio and the late Francois Furet, provides a brilliant analysis of the work.

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When it was first published in 2000, Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop's new translation of Democracy in America was lauded in all quarters as the finest and most definitive edition of Tocqueville's classic - complete with the most faithful and readable translation to date, impeccable annotations of unfamiliar references, and a substantial introduction placing the work and its author in the broader contexts of political philosophy and statesmanship. Mansfield and Winthrop's astonishing efforts have not only captured the elegance, subtlety, and profundity of Tocqueville's original, but they also offer proof of how very essential this masterpiece continues to be.

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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

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