Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French aristocrat, magistrate, political thinker, historian, and statesman. Sent to the United States in 1831 to study prisons with Gustave de Beaumont, he used the journey to analyze democracy, equality, association, religion, race, and political culture. Democracy in America became his masterpiece.
Democracy in America is Tocqueville's great comparative study of democratic society. The first volume examines American political institutions: township government, federalism, courts, associations, parties, newspapers, religion, and the habits that sustain self-government.
The Old Regime and the Revolution (L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution), published in Paris in June 1856, is Alexis de Tocqueville's study of France before 1789. Its argument is that the Revolution, which its makers believed had broken French history in two, in fact completed a work the monarchy had long been doing: the concentration of power in a central administration and the levelling of the French into similar, separated individuals.
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