Democracy in America Vol. II

In 1831, a twenty-five-year-old French aristocrat crossed the Atlantic to study American prisons. What he found instead was a revolution in human society, and the result was one of the most penetrating analyses of democracy ever written. Volume II, published in 1840, moves beyond the institutional observations of its predecessor to examine what Tocqueville called the 'habits of the heart' - the customs, feelings, and intellectual habits that sustain democratic life. Here he explores the tension between equality and freedom, warns of the 'tyranny of the majority,' and identifies the subtle dangers of individualism in a society without hierarchy. Yet he also finds cause for hope: in the extraordinary American talent for association, in the role of religion as a counterweight to materialist excess, in the way democratic citizens might learn to trust one another again. Written with aristocratic elegance by a man who loved liberty but feared its excesses, this book speaks to any reader who has wondered what democracy actually does to the human soul - and whether it can survive its own contradictions.