Extract

Long after his death in 1859, Alexis de Tocqueville still fascinates readers. Mountains of books have been dedicated to Tocqueville’s life and writings, including two previous biographies and seminal accounts of his voyage to America and the composition of Democracy in America. Given how much has been written already, the bar is set high for a new Tocqueville biography. Fortunately, though, Olivier Zunz has taken up the challenge of saying something original about the enigmatic French prophet of democracy. His scrupulously researched and elegantly written The Man Who Understood Democracy makes a major contribution to our understanding of Tocqueville’s personal life, political career, and intellectual oeuvre. How, Zunz wonders, could a twentysomething aristocrat of Tocqueville’s distinguished lineage and sensitive temperament produce such a brilliant analysis of democracy, dedicate much of his adult life to implementing his ideas, and, largely failing in this political vocation, ensconce himself in the archives and surrender his last years to composing a second masterpiece, the Ancien Régime and the Revolution?

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