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US History- De Tocqueville |
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Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life
by Hugh Brogan
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Synopses & Reviews Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the greatest political writers of all time. Born a French aristocrat, he saw the decimation of his family during the Reign of Terror. He spent most of his adult life struggling for liberty under the unsuccessful regimes of nineteenth-century France.
In 1831, Tocqueville made his famous voyage to America, and his two-volume record of his journey, Democracy in America, remains one of the most vital texts in the history of democratic thought. Deeply affected by his own experience of France's disastrous revolutions, Tocqueville grappled incisively with the question of how America's nascent democracy might thrive. His observations on American character and culture remain startlingly fresh nearly two centuries later.
A magisterial book by an eminent scholar of both European and American history, this will stand as the standard biography of Alexis de Tocqueville for years to come. Review: "This magisterial biography, selected by the Economist on its U.K. publication as one of the best 100 books of 2006, serves up all the interesting personal details (constant health struggles, an unsuitable marriage to a woman of lesser means) in the life of Tocqueville (1805 – 1859), the man who most influenced America and its self-perception. But the heart of the book is Tocqueville's travels in the United States and the writing of Democracy in America. Tocqueville both appreciated, and was discomfited by, American egalitarianism. Raised in a Catholic environment, the French aristocrat 'could not see the logic' of Protestantism. (His visit to a Shaker settlement was especially unnerving.) British historian Brogan is not uncritical: he notes that Tocqueville never understood that democracy relies 'principally on elections to control majorities,' rather than on a system of legislative and judicial checks and balances. Brogan's greatest contribution may be his reading of the second volume of Democracy in America as autobiography, arguing that Tocqueville wrote it in part to justify his own break with the expectations of his elite family and social circle. All in all, this is an engrossing and erudite account. 16 b&w illus." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "Alexis de Tocqueville is a towering figure in 19th-century political thought, on a par with Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill and more prophetic than either of them. It is therefore a bit confounding to realize that, despite all the books and essays about Tocqueville's masterpiece, 'Democracy in America,' there was no full-scale biography in English of the man himself. Now there is. Hugh ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Brogan's 'Alexis de Tocqueville' is a magisterial account, 50 years in the making, that follows the precocious French nobleman through the swirling history of post-revolutionary France, the rutted roads of backwoods America, the bewildering comings and goings of different royalist and republican French governments, all the way to Tocqueville's somewhat controversial final hours in 1859, when the question of his religious convictions at the end remains blurry. If this is not the definitive life, it is only because no such thing is possible. It is surely the authoritative life for our time. Brogan's style is Boswellian, meaning that he places himself alongside Alexis — as he calls him — then quotes from Tocqueville's letters and journals as part of an ongoing dialogue designed to reveal how the master's mind worked. This is a somewhat dangerous approach, but Brogan is impeccable in his citation of sources. He argues that the most important event in Tocqueville's life occurred before he was born: the French Revolution, where Tocqueville's grandfather was guillotined along with several relatives. Tocqueville's famous doctrine 'the tyranny of the majority,' which Brogan finds somewhat overstated in 'Democracy in America,' probably had its origins in those horrific mob scenes during the Terror. Brogan argues, convincingly, that part of Tocqueville's personality was forever rooted in the old aristocratic world that his mind told him was dying. That internal contradiction proved an invaluable intellectual asset when he visited the United States in 1831-32 and began to draft 'Democracy in America,' for it gave his analysis of the genuinely new political chemistry congealing in America a dramatic edge. What Jefferson had called 'self-evident' was for Tocqueville a historically unprecedented development destined to topple all the monarchies of Europe and the kind of aristocratic society that had shaped him. This is a potent theme, one that made me think of the overripe ironies of Henry Adams in his famous 'The Education of Henry Adams,' embracing his irrelevancy in the modern world that was aborning. Tocqueville's temperament was less melodramatic than Adams", but he did recognize that he was a victim of his greatest prophecy, that the triumph of democracy meant the end of his world. American readers will find the chapters on Tocqueville's nine-month sojourn in the United States and his subsequent crafting of the two-volume 'Democracy in America' the most important pages. Brogan builds on the pioneering scholarship of George W. Pierson on Tocqueville's American tour and James T. Schleifer's impeccable detective work on the crafting and drafting of 'Democracy.' Brogan is especially good on the influences on Tocqueville's thinking before his exposure to America, chiefly about the burden that feudalism imposed on France and the advantages the United States enjoyed in lacking such a burden. Tocqueville struck gold because he already knew what he was looking for. Previous European commentators on the American experiment — chiefly English observers such as Frances Trollope, who described her 1827 visit in 'Domestic Manners of the Americans' — had emphasized the semi-civilized conditions of the United States, the bad roads and bad food, the tobacco-spitting on the floor, the crass materialism and the conspicuous commercialism of American society. Tocqueville was at pains to acknowledge that all these accusations were true but that something new and exciting was brewing in this provincial outpost of Western civilization — something rooted in a deep-felt sense of equality that was destined to destroy all the class assumptions of European society. This was Tocqueville's central insight, and although he had others — the likely war between North and South over slavery, the dominance of corporate power during the Gilded Age, the eventual confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War — the hegemonic power of the democratic ethos was his most prescient prediction. More than any other man of the century in Europe, he knew where history was headed. My own attention wavered toward the end as Brogan described the incessant flutterings of French politics in the 1840s and "50s. We lose sight of Tocqueville for pages at a time, though I would concede that Brogan's decision to write biography on this epic scale virtually forces him to provide the political context of Tocqueville's latter years. The pace of the story picks up when Brogan gets to Tocqueville's last work, 'The Old Regime and the Revolution,' another classic that shared two characteristically Tocquevillian assumptions: first, a heartfelt nostalgia for the lost aristocratic world and, second, a sociological way of thinking that rooted all political change in the underlying mores and values of a nation's culture. Obligatory caveats aside, Brogan's achievement here is monumental. He wears his learning lightly, the analysis conveys a distilled wisdom that is blessedly bereft of academic jargon, the prose is engaging (with a conversational voice that invites the reader into an ongoing dialogue), and the posture toward Tocqueville is appreciative but never mindlessly celebratory. This is a book virtually certain to win some major prizes. Joseph J. Ellis' books include 'American Sphinx,' 'Founding Brothers' and the forthcoming 'American Creation.'" Reviewed by Benjamin ForgeyJoseph J. Ellis, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "Brogan vividly captures the brilliance and complexity of Alexis de Tocqueville: prophet of modern democracy bound to the old regime by family and feeling; lover of liberty and the rule of law who felt the lure of empire; bold and restless spirit who recoiled from revolution. This is a vibrant and compelling biography." Alan Houston, University of California San Diego Review: “This is a magnificent biography. Hugh Brogans knowledge of the details of Tocquevilles life is extraordinary, as is his erudite account of his family life and of French politics and society in the first half of the nineteenth century. And how splendidly the book is written! Tocquevilles life was marked by a triumph of character; Hugh Brogans biography is a triumph of history and letters.”John Lukacs Synopsis: Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the greatest political thinkers of all time. Born a French aristocrat, he lost nearly his entire family in the Reign of Terror, and he spent most of his adult life struggling for liberty under the unsuccessful regimes of nineteenth-century France.
At age twenty-five he travelled to America and encountered democracy for the first time. This firsthand experience contributed to his incisive writing on liberty and democracy. The ancien régime launched the scholarly study of the French Revolution, and Democracy in America remains the best book ever written by a European about the United States. This is a brilliant account of his life. About the Author Hugh Brogan held the R. A. Butler Chair in History at the University of Essex and since retiring has had a research professorship there. His books include The Penguin History of the United States and biographies of John F. Kennedy and Arthur Ransome.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780300108033
- Subtitle:
- A Life
- Author:
- Brogan, Hugh
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- Subject:
- Literary
- Subject:
- Political
- Subject:
- Historians
- Subject:
- Statesmen
- Subject:
- General Biography
- Copyright:
- 2006
- Edition Description:
- Trade Cloth
- Publication Date:
- March 2007
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 724
- Dimensions:
- 9.24x6.56x1.97 in. 2.51 lbs.
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