“In this first major biography of the author of Democracy in America, André Jardin traces Alexis de Tocqueville’s eventful life from his birth in 1805 to aristocratic parents in post-revolutionary France, through his trip to antebellum America as a young man, his adventures in Algeria, and his political career in France’s Second Republic, to his return to writing and the publication of his other classic work L’Ancien régime et la révolution in 1856. Jardin also offers an illuminating critical analysis of Democracy in America, arguing that the concerns for just government that inform this famous work dominated Tocqueville’s thought throughout his life.”