Word: americaã
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Alexis de Tocqueville is famously taught in American middle schools and high schools as the Frenchman who loved America and who wrote the treatise “Democracy in America?? in the mid-19th century. There is usually no further discussion of the man or his famous book before moving on to material deemed more important by state-standardized testing boards. The motives behind Tocqueville’s mission are therefore overlooked and any meaninful insight into his character is completely lost...
Tocqueville once wrote, in reference to the danger of America??s non-authoritarian, self-governing society, “Once an idea has taken hold of the American people’s minds, whether it’s a just one or an unreasonable one, nothing is more difficult than to uproot it.” One could say Harvard Professor Leo Damrosch faces this challenge in writing “Toqueville’s Discovery of America.” In his new book, Damrosch is attempting to remedy the general American conception of Tocqueville through...
...Tocqueville’s Discovery of America?? reads more like a novel than a deeply-investigated historical text. Damrosch weaves insights pieced together from his extensive research with many of Tocqueville’s own words and those of his companion, Gustave de Beaumont, to construct a biography of Tocqueville. Scattered throughout the text are illustrations of Tocqueville, the people he met, and the scenery he witnessed on his journey, contributing to the authentic, accessible feel of the book. In addition, the intimate details of Tocqueville’s life—from his loss of faith...
Despite the easy accessibility of “Tocqueville’s Discovery of America?? and its colorful anecdotes, the book does tend to run on the dry side from time to time. “Democracy in America?? is a monumental text in and of itself, and while an in-depth account of Tocqueville and Beaumont’s journey across America lends a sense of time and place to such an important work, it drags a bit when it strays from its focus on illuminating Tocqueville’s most famous book...
Regardless, Damrosch’s work lends insight into the mind of the man who defined America for the world. In “Tocqueville’s Discovery of America,” Damrosch explains the diverse experiences that allowed Tocqueville to both construct and critique America??s political ideology and the pulse of its society. As Tocqueville himself once said, “Everything I see, everything I hear, everything I still see from far away, forms a confused mass in my mind that I may never have the time or ability to disentangle. It would...