Democracy in America (Penguin Classics)

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  It is probably the only book that deals with the topic of America and democracy that can be read both as a historical and current event outlook. Most of what he wrote about is true today as he discussed the problematic social realtions of white-black america, role of chrisitanity and the family, and how our media greatly influences our democracy.

  What I found intresting was that he made a passing assumption that both the United States and Russia would become superpowers! How he believed t... (show more)

  It is probably the only book that deals with the topic of America and democracy that can be read both as a historical and current event outlook. Most of what he wrote about is true today as he discussed the problematic social realtions of white-black america, role of chrisitanity and the family, and how our media greatly influences our democracy.

  What I found intresting was that he made a passing assumption that both the United States and Russia would become superpowers! How he believed this over a hundred years ago gives a lot of creedence to his abilty of preception and understanding of a culture's social customs. What is also amazing is that he wrote about American society in such indepth in only a nine month period.

  Tocqueville makes a dire warning about American democracy: if our natural desire for the good life (plato's excellence) makes us complicent, then our belevulent democracy can quickly turn into a paternal despotism. (show less)

   

   

  by Brooks Smith on Apr 01, 2009 at 07:58PM

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  About 400 pages in, I realized this book for what it is: First, if American Society has a Nostradamus, it is Tocqueville. From the 1830's - and looking forward -his treatises on laws, customs, religion, and rights are as much alarms now as they were beacons then. What must've been received as the French tourist's view of our fishbowl republic, has become an authoritative historical document. He wrote as a foreign outsider, we read him as an historical insider.

  The second realization, after... (show more)

  About 400 pages in, I realized this book for what it is: First, if American Society has a Nostradamus, it is Tocqueville. From the 1830's - and looking forward -his treatises on laws, customs, religion, and rights are as much alarms now as they were beacons then. What must've been received as the French tourist's view of our fishbowl republic, has become an authoritative historical document. He wrote as a foreign outsider, we read him as an historical insider.

  The second realization, after slugging through half the book front to back, was that these are nearly blog entries on specific topics. I picture him in the taverns and hotels scribbling feverishly away in tattered moleskines and sending them home via horseman and trade vessels. He delves occasionally into story-telling for emphasis, but more accurately takes the span of a nine-month journey and boils it rather well into tiny little chapters of insight, each with very specific aim and judiciously titled. It is chilling to realize that just mere decades after this writing, we would be a torn people, killing each other in record numbers.

  He is fair, and seems a fan of our early society, yet holds no punches in terms of our ills; ills that persist today. A special bonus was finding the narrative 'Two Weeks in the Wilderness' at the end of the book. Page 875 - you read that right - begins a riveting account of western settlers and native Americans. (show less)

   

   

  by Timothy Lake on Aug 04, 2008 at 06:02PM

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