Major Works

• The Old Regime and the Revolution

  - Recommended Translations: Tocqueville, Alexis de. The Old Regime and the Revolution. Vol. 1. Edited by François Furet and Françoise Mélonio. Translated by Alan S. Kahan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Tocqueville, Alexis de. The Old Regime and the Revolution. Vol. 2. Edited by François Furet and Françoise Mélonio. Translated by Alan S. Kahan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.  
  Excerpt: The book I now publish is not a history of the Revolution. That history has been too brilliantly written for me to think of writing it afresh. This is a mere essay on the Revolution. The French made, in 1789, the greatest effort that has ever been… More

Commentary

• “M. de Tocqueville on Democracy in America” by J.S. Mill

  - Cohen, Marshall, ed. The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill. New York: The Modern Library, 1961.
  Fascinating review of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America by Tocqueville’s colleague and correspondent, John Stuart Mill. The letter reveals the enormous respect Mill had for Tocqueville but also the differences between the two thinkers, even as… More

• Alexis de Tocqueville

  - Marvin Zetterbaum, "Alexis de Tocqueville," History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, University of Chicago Press, 1987 (Third Edition).
  Excerpt: The publication in 1835 of the first part of Democracy in America established Alexis de Tocqueville as one of the foremost analysts of the problem of democracy.  Tocqueville was the first writer of modern times to undertake a comprehensive… More

• Interpreting Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

  - Interpreting Tocqueville's Democracy in America, ed. Ken Masugi.  (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991)
  Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) is so frequently quoted that his readers may not probe beneath the enticing surface Democracy in America presents.  Many would remain content with pickin and choosing from his text, reading him as others do Montaigne… More

• The Illiberal Tocqueville

  - Edward Banfield.  "The Illiberal Tocqueville" in Here the People Rule.  (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1991)
  Excerpt: Democracy in America has been called the greatest book ever written about one country by a citizen of another.  It is certainly the greatest book ever written by anyone about America.  After 150 years there is hardly a page that does not open the… More

• The Cambridge Companion to Toqueville

  - The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, ed. Cheryl B. Welch, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  Table of Contents: Part I. Theory: 1. Tocqueville’s Comparative Perspectives by Seymour Drescher 2. Tocqueville on 1789: Preconditions, Precipitants, and Triggers by Jon Elster 3. Tocqueville’s New Political Science by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba… More

• Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect

  - Paul A Rahe.  Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010)
  Excerpt:   In early November 1836, when Tocqueville wrote to Louis de Kergorlay to voice his frustration and his worries, he complained that “a multitude of ideas remains obscure in my mind,” ad he lamented that, in the absence of his childhood… More

• Toqueville: A Very Short Introduction

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, Toqueville: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2010.
  Excerpt: In view of Tocqueville’s criticisms of philosophy, it may seem paradoxical and presumptuous to call him a philosopher. But he calls himself a “new kind of liberal;’ and he sets forth a new liberalism that he has rethought. In… More