Tocqueville's Discovery of America

by Damrosch, Leo

• ISBN13: 9780374532598
• ISBN10: 0374532591
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-12
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece,Democracy in America, was the product of a young man's open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. InTocqueville's Discovery of America, the prizewinning biographer Leo Damrosch retraces Tocqueville's nine-month journey through the young nation in 1831-32, illuminating how his enduring ideas were born of imaginative interchange with America and Americans, and painting a vivid picture of Jacksonian America. Damrosch shows that Tocqueville found much to admire in the dynamism of American society and in its egalitarian ideals. But he was offended by the ethos of grasping materialism and was convinced that the institution of slavery was bound to give rise to a tragic civil war. Drawing on documents and letters that have never before appeared in English, as well as on a wide range of scholarship,Tocqueville's Discovery of Americabrings the man, his ideas, and his world to startling life.

Author Biography

Leo Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of several works, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius, a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award in nonfiction and winner of the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Map: Tocqueville and Beaumont in America	p. xi
Time Line of the American Journey	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
Acknowledgments	p. xxiii
Where Tocqueville Was Coming From	p. 3
First Impressions: New York City	p. 15
ôEverything Attests to a New Worldö	p. 43
The Romance of the Forest	p. 66
Boston: Democracy at a State of Mind	p. 95
Philadelphia: Toleration, Association, and Incarceration	p. 114
Democracy in ôthe Westö	p. 126
Downriver to New Orleans	p. 144
Road Trip Through the South	p. 165
The Nation's Disappointing Capital	p. 182
Building a Masterpiece	p. 194
After America	p. 217
Notes	p. 227
Index	p. 265
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