Download Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction AudioBook Free
No-one has ever explained American democracy with more accurate insight or more profoundly than Alexis de Tocqueville. After ending up in Americans on intensive travels in america, and intense analysis of documents and specialists, he authored the landmark Democracy in America, posting its two quantities in 1835 and 1840. Ever since, this booklet has been the best source for each and every serious try to understand America and democracy itself. Yet Tocqueville himself remains a mystery behind the beauty of his style. Now one of our leading specialists on Tocqueville points out him in this marvelous new access in Oxford's acclaimed Very Short Introduction series. Harvey Mansfield addresses his subject matter as a thinker, plainly and incisively checking out Tocqueville's writings--not only his masterpiece, but also his hidden knowledge Recollections, intended for posterity by themselves, and his unfinished work on his indigenous France, The Old Program and the Trend. Tocqueville was a liberal, Mansfield is convinced, however, not of the most common sort. The many elements of his life found expression in his thought: his aristocratic ancestry, his ventures in politics, his voyages in another country, his expectations and fears for America, and his disappointment with France. All his writings show a enthusiasm for political liberty and insistence on real human greatness. Perhaps most important, he saw liberty not in ideas, but in the practice of self-government in America. Ever an opposition of abstraction, he offered an evaluation that causes us to think about what we do in our politics--suggesting that theory itself may be an adversary of freedom. And that, Mansfield expresses, makes him a vitally important thinker for today. Translator of your authoritative edition of Democracy in America, Harvey Mansfield here offers the fruit of ages of research and reflection in a clear, insightful, and marvelously small introduction.
