Volume 32, Number 11 · June 27, 1985
The Passions of Tocqueville
By Francois Furet, Translated by David Bellos
Alexis de Tocqueville: Selected Letters on Politics and Society
edited by Roger Boesche, translated by James Toupin, by Roger Boesche
University of California Press, 417 pp., $24.95
Tocqueville is best known as the author of three works, Democracy in America, the Recollections, and the Ancien Régime, although his complete works (of which publication is still unfinished) run to some thirty volumes.[1] In one sense, it is neither unfair nor absurd that Tocqueville's lasting reputation rests on these three works, since they represent the three high points of his life—when he was a young lawyer exploring the consequences of democracy in the United States, a politician grappling with the 1848 revolution, and finally a historian returning to his first intellectual interest, the French Revolution.
Review, 4566 words
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