Democracy in America

When Alexis de Tocqueville traveled through the United States in 1831, his mission was to investigate the country's prison system. Instead, he wrote an enduring study of a democracy in its infancy--a study that embraced America's history, geography, politics, legal system, economy, and culture and that remains the most objective, thorough, and insightful of its kind. Here are intriguing glimpses of a vanished America, from town meetings in New England to Indians in the frontier territories of Alabama. But what will intrigue modern readers is how many of Tocqueville's observations still hold true: on the mixed advantages of a free press, the strained relations among the races, and on the threats posed to democracies by consumerism and corruption.