Democracy in America

Published in two parts in 1835 and 1840, this study records what Tocqueville observed of the United States in the early 1830s and what he inferred for Europe. He examines township government, the federal constitution, parties, the press, associations, the legal profession, and the equality of social conditions that he takes as America's decisive fact. The second part turns to manners, family, religion, literature, and the dangers of majority tyranny and a soft administrative despotism. The book is a comparative political inquiry, written to explain how a democratic social state works and where it may fail. It is neither a travel diary nor a party pamphlet.

Bound in red leather with a gilt typographical design. Dark red slipcase.