Tocqueville’s Discovery of America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), by Leo Damrosch

Dispatched by the French government in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wason a mission to study American prisons. He inspected Sing Sing as promised, butwas more interested in investigating the country as a whole. The backdrop tohis often quoted classic, Democracy inAmerica, is the subject of Tocqueville’s Discovery ofAmerica. The readable account by Harvardliterature professor Leo Damrosch follows the French savant’s journey acrossthe young republic by examining his letters home and the copious notebooks fromwhich Democracy inAmerica was drawn. Damrosch points outthat Tocqueville was sometimes naive, failing to recognize the vast disparityin wealth among white Americans. Yet, he was right more often than not,especially when pondering the business culture and enormous natural resourcesthat would turn Americainto a world power. Tocqueville admired Native Americans and loathed thebarbaric treatment the settlers handed them and the land they inhabited.