Hugh Brogan and his biography
about Alexis de Tocqueville, judged a highly perceptive interpreter of the
American experience in the nineteenth century and
one of the greatest political writers of all time.
About the book: Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the greatest political writers of all time. Born a French aristocrat, he saw the decimation of his family during the Reign of Terror. He spent most of his adult life struggling for liberty under the unsuccessful regimes of nineteenth-century France.In 1831, Tocqueville made his famous voyage to America, and his two-volume record of his journey, Democracy in America, remains one of the most vital texts in the history of democratic thought. Deeply affected by his own experience of France's disastrous revolutions, Tocqueville grappled incisively with the question of how America's nascent democracy might thrive. His observations on American character and culture remain startlingly fresh nearly two centuries later. A magisterial book by an eminent scholar of both European and American
history, this will stand as the standard biography of Alexis de
Tocqueville for years to come. The life of Alexis de Toqueville: Born Paris, 29 July 1805 Died Cannes, 16 April 1859 1831 Visits America to research penal system. 1835 Democracy in America published. 1849 French Foreign Minister (June-Oct). 1851 Jailed for opposing coup d'etat of Louis-Napoleon. 1856 Publication of L'Ancien Regime. What he said: 'No example is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.' 'What do men need in order to remain free? A taste for freedom.' 'Centralisation and socialism are native of the same soil.' 'History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies'. |
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