Democracy in America

The Frenchman who saw American civic life more clearly than the Americans did. Tocqueville noticed the thing natives took for granted: that the country ran on association, on people joining together to do for themselves what elsewhere a state or a lord would do. He also saw the tyranny of the majority and the habits of the heart that might check it. Nearly two centuries on, his book is still the first place to look to understand what self-government feels like from the inside.

The young French aristocrat who came to study American prisons and stayed to write the deepest book anyone has produced about American civic life. Democracy in America saw what the natives took for granted: that the country ran on association, on people joining together to govern themselves. He also saw the dangers, the tyranny of the majority, the soft despotism of comfort, and named the habits of the heart that might guard against them. An outsider who understood the republic better than most of its citizens.