Democracy in America
A young French aristocrat's report on the American republic in the 1830s, and on the habits of association that he thought held it together.
Tocqueville toured the United States in 1831 ostensibly to study its prisons, and produced instead the classic account of democratic society: its equality of condition, its associations, its restlessness, and the tyranny of the majority he feared it would produce. Abridged here by Scott A. Sandage, in the George Lawrence translation.
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Robert Reich
For example, Tocqueville, as he wandered up and down the east coast of the United States, saw something that puzzled him a great deal at first. He saw Americans who were among the wealthiest in their communities investing in public schools and improving highways and being community leaders. He asked himself: “Why did they do this?” In Europe it was all about honour, duty and patriotism and noblesse oblige.
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