Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville

New York : Adlard and Saunders, 1839

3rd American ed. Revised and Corrected. Bound in publisher's green cloth.  Rebacked, with renewed spine cloth. xvi, 455 p.  Foxing throughout.  English translation of "De la democratie en Amerique," first published in French in 1835.  Tocqueville's extremely important and influential analysis of American democracy is "one of the most important texts in political literature." (PMM).

Democracy in America is "the first systematic and empirical study of the effects of political power on modern society" (Nisbet).  

Overall, Tocqueville's conclusions were that the trend of history would irresistibly lean towards equality; and that the future of France, indeed of the Western world, was bound up with the acceptance of democratic principles, these being the one effective means of avoiding submission to tyranny (Harvey and Heseltine, 711).   Translated by Henry Reeve, Esq. ; with an original preface and notes by John C. Spencer.