Alexis de Tocqueville

Nel 1831-32, sessant’anni dopo l’inizio della rivoluzione americana, Alexis de Tocqueville compì un viaggio di studio negli Stati Uniti, durante il quale esaminò da vicino il funzionamento delle istituzioni politiche, amministrative e giudiziarie del Paese. Nel 1835 pubblicò la prima parte de La democrazia in America, che contiene un’analisi sistematica delle istituzioni americane. La seconda parte fu pubblicata nel 1840, ed è edita insieme alla prima nel presente volume.
Un classico del pensiero politico dell’Ottocento, il libro di Tocqueville offre anche oggi spunti molto interessanti di riflessione. “Il problema da lui posto, - dice Giorgio Candeloro nella sua prefazione al libro – quello di fondare una società di uomini che siano al tempo stesso eguali e liberi e di impedire l’instaurazione di tirannidi ben più oppressive di quelle del passato, è ancor vivo e urgente nel nostro tempo.”

Comprehensive in its chronology, the works it discusses, and the commentators it critically examines, Alexis…

Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first foreigners to recognize and trumpet the grandness of the American project. His two-volume classic, Democracy in America, published in 1835, not only offered a vivid account of what was then a new nation but famously predicted what that nation would become. His startling prescience, as well as the endurance of his political ideas, has firmly established Tocqueville's place in American history; his chronicle of our infancy is a fixture on every American history syllabus. Nearly all of his clairvoyant predictions about American political life, from the influence of Evangelical Christianity to the advent of our "consumer society," have come true—and on the schedule he set.

Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first foreigners to recognize and trumpet the grandness of the American project. His two-volume classic, Democracy in America, published in 1835, not only offered a vivid account of what was then a new nation but famously predicted what that nation would become. His startling prescience, as well as the endurance of his political ideas, has firmly established Tocqueville's place in American history…

In this groundbreaking new work, Matthew Mancini tells the surprising story of Alexis de Tocqueville's reception in American thought and culture from the time of his 1831 visit to the United States to the turn of the twenty-first century.