On Tocqueville: Democracy and America

Alan Ryan brilliantly illuminates the observations of the French philosopher who first journeyed to the United States in 1831 and went on to catalog the unique features of the American social contract. Often thought of as the father of "American Exceptionalism," Tocqueville sought to analyze the social conditions of emerging political equality, "a river that may be channeled but cannot be stopped in its course." Struck by the fact that even then "all Americans believed they belonged to the middle class," Tocqueville made prescient observations about American life that remain as relevant today as when they were first written. In Ryan's hands, On Tocqueville becomes the perfect introduction to Tocqueville's two-volume masterpiece, Democracy in America.

Excerpted here are Democracy in America, The Old Regime & Revolution, and selections from Tocqueville's memoir of the 1848 revolution.