Alexis de Tocqueville may be the most influential political thinker in American history. He also led an unusually active and ambitious career in French politics. In this magisterial book, one of America's most important contemporary theorists draws on decades of research and thought to present the first work that fully connects Tocqueville's political and theoretical lives. In doing so, Sheldon Wolin presents sweeping new interpretations of Tocqueville's major works and of his place in intellectual history. As he traces the origins and impact of Tocqueville's ideas, Wolin also offers a profound commentary on the general trajectory of Western political life over the past two hundred years.Wolin proceeds by examining Tocqueville's key writings in light of his experiences in the troubled world of French politics. He portrays Democracy in America, for example, as a theory of discovery that emerged from Tocqueville's contrasting experiences of America and of France's constitutional monarchy. He shows us how Tocqueville used Recollections to reexamine his political commitments in light of the revolutions of 1848 and the threat of socialism. He portrays The Old Regime and the French Revolution as a work of theoretical history designed to throw light on the Bonapartist despotism he saw around him. Throughout, Wolin highlights the tensions between Tocqueville's ideas and his activities as a politician, arguing that--despite his limited political success--Tocqueville was ''perhaps the last influential theorist who can be said to have truly cared about political life.''In the course of the book, Wolin also shows that Tocqueville struggled with many of the forces that constrain politics today, including the relentless advance of capitalism, of science and technology, and of state bureaucracy. He concludes that Tocqueville's insights and anxieties about the impotence of politics in a ''postaristocratic'' era speak directly to the challenges of our own ''postdemocratic'' age. A monumental new study of Tocqueville, this is also a rich and provocative work about the past, the present, and the future of democratic life in America and abroad.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 3 PART ONE: THE ABUNDANCE OF POWER 11 CHAPTER I: MODERN THEORY AND MODERN POWER 13 CHAPTER II: Theoria: THE THEORETICAL JOURNEY 34 PART TWO: ENCOUNTERING THE AMAZING 57 CHAPTER III: DISCOVERING DEMOCRACY 59 CHAPTER IV: SELF AND STRUCTURE 76 CHAPTER V: DOUBT AND DISCONNECTION 102 CHAPTER VI: " ... THE THEORY OF WHAT IS GREAT" 113 CHAPTER VII: MYTH AND POLITICAL IMPRESSIONISM 132 CHAPTER VIII: THE SPECTACLE OF AMERICA 149 PART THREE: THE THEORETICAL ENCAPSULATION OF AMERICA CHAPTER IX: SOCIAL CONTRACT VERSUS POLITICAL CULTURE 169 CHAPTER X: THE CULTURE OF THE POLITICAL: "THE RITUALS OF PRACTICE" 202 CHAPTER XI: FEUDAL AMERICA 229 CHAPTER XII: MAJORITY RULE OR MAJORITY POLITICS 241 CHAPTER XIII: CENTRALIZATION AND DISSOLUTION 260 CHAPTER XIV: THE IMAGE OF DEMOCRACY 275 PART FOUR: PERSONA AND THE POLITICS OF THEORY 287 CHAPTER XV: TRAGIC HERO, POPULAR MASK 289 CHAPTER XVI: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF CULTURE 304 CHAPTER XVII: DEPOTISM AND UTOPIA 339 CHAPTER XVIII: OLD NEW WORLD, NEW OLD WORLD 365 CHAPTER XIX: TOCQUEVILLEAN DEMOCRACY 374 CHAPTER XX: THE PENITENTIARY TEMPTATION 383 PART FIVE: SECOND JOURNEY TO AMERICA 407 CHAPTER XXI: THE POLITICAL EDUCATION OF THE BOURGEOISIE 409 CHAPTER XXII: Souvenirs RECOLLECTIONS IN/TRANQUILLITY 428 CHAPTER XXIII: Souvenirs SOCIALISM AND THE CRISIS OF THE POLITICAL 456 CHAPTER XXIV: The Old Regime and the Revolution: Mythistoricus et theoretieus 498 CHAPTER XXV: The Old Regime: MODERNIZATION AND THE POLITICS OF LOSS 531 CHAPTER XXVI: POSTDEMOCRACY 561 NOTES 573 INDEX 641