Alexis de Tocqueville
French political thinker whose Democracy in America remains the most penetrating foreign analysis of American society ever written. He identified both the promise of democratic equality and the threat of its tyrannies—the tyranny of the majority and administrative despotism. His work is as relevant today as when it was written.
Works
- Democracy in AmericaClassic examination of American democratic institutions and society through French perspective
- The Old Regime and the RevolutionAnalysis of French revolutionary origins in pre-revolutionary feudal and state structures
- RecollectionsTocqueville's eyewitness account of 1848 Paris uprising and February Revolution
- Journey to AmericaTocqueville's travel notes from his journey observing American institutions firsthand
- The Ancien Régime and the French RevolutionAnalysis of French revolutionary origins in pre-revolutionary feudal and state structures
- Memoir on PauperismEssay examining causes of poverty and proposing humanitarian welfare responses