Word: damrosch
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...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 a meticulously-researched, accessible, and thoroughly charming account of the writer’s journey across...
...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...
...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...
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...