Word: tocquevilleã
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Damrosch’s purpose in “Tocqueville??s Discovery of America,” however, is not solely to demystify the man behind the famous work of social science. The anecdotes about Tocqueville serve a greater purpose: to illuminate the ideas and thought processes of an author who wrote the text that continues to define American democracy across the world...
...most striking chapters is “Boston: Democracy as a State of Mind,” in which Damrosch recounts Tocqueville??s run-ins with Boston bluebloods and intellectuals, who were more like French aristocrats than any Americans that he had met up to that point. Between his discussions with intellectuals and civilians that he met on the streets, Tocqueville became aware of the distinct separation between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law in America. He concluded that the “habits of the heart” and the ideals...
Damrosch also highlights some of Tocqueville??s less well-known views. By exploring Tocqueville??s experiences in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and many other Southern states, Damrosch addresses Tocqueville??s reservations about the treatment of race in the United States. Tocqueville was vehemently against the enslavement of blacks and the poor treatment of Native Americans, and concluded in an incredibly prescient manner that the discrimination against blacks in America would result in “the most horrible of all civil wars, and perhaps the destruction of one of the two races...
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...