Introduction

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America has been called by Harvey Mansfield the “best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America." What can a 200-year-old book teach us about democracy in America today?

Scholars—Jeremy Jennings, author of Travels with Tocqueville Beyond America; Olivier Zunz, author of The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville; and Catherine Zuckert of the University of Notre Dame—discuss Tocqueville’s masterpiece and its lessons for modern Americans with Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. 

This conversation was streamed live on March 6, 2023.

Additional Resources

• Jeremy Jennings, Travels with Tocqueville Beyond America
• Olivier Zunz, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville
• Catherine Zuckert, “The Saving Minimum? Tocqueville on the Role of Religion in America—Then and Now,” American Political Thought
• Michael Oakeshott, “The Masses in Representative Democracy”

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