Democracy in America - Volume 1

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Read Books, 2011 - Political Science - 474 pages
This text contains the first volume of Democracy in America, a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville that describes the societal changes that he believed had been transpiring over the previous seven hundred years towards a more democratic system. This text outlines his ideas about how the socio-economic conditions of men were becoming more egalitarian, the origins and causes of which he believed to be intrinsic in factors such as the ability of all men to enter the clergy and increasing opportunities in trade and commerce. An engaging and comprehensive analysis pertaining to the evolution of democracy, this two-part classic is a necessary addition to every socio-economic compendium. Alexis de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). He was active in French politics and retired from his political career after Louis NapolEon Bonaparte's 1851 coup. This edition has been republished with a new introductory biography of the author."

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About the author (2011)

French writer and politician Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Verneuil to an aristocratic Norman family. He entered the bar in 1825 and became an assistant magistrate at Versailles. In 1831, he was sent to the United States to report on the prison system. This journey produced a book called On the Penitentiary System in the United States (1833), as well as a much more significant work called Democracy in America (1835--40), a treatise on American society and its political system. Active in French politics, Tocqueville also wrote Old Regime and the Revolution (1856), in which he argued that the Revolution of 1848 did not constitute a break with the past but merely accelerated a trend toward greater centralization of government. Tocqueville was an observant Catholic, and this has been cited as a reason why many of his insights, rather than being confined to a particular time and place, reach beyond to see a universality in all people everywhere.

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