Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide (Eminent Lives Series)
Author: Joseph Epstein
Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first foreigners to recognize and trumpet the grandness of the American project. His two-volume classic, Democracy in America, published in 1835, not only offered a vivid account of what was then a new nation but famously predicted what that nation would become. His startling prescience, as well as the endurance of his political ideas, has firmly established Tocqueville's place in American history; his chronicle of our infancy is a fixture on every American history syllabus. Nearly all of his clairvoyant predictions about American political life, from the influence of Evangelical Christianity to the advent of our "consumer society," have come true—and on the schedule he set.
Yet in his own time, Tocqueville had little evidence for the truth of his ideas. Introspective, sickly, prone to self-doubt, he was an unlikely visionary. Joseph Epstein, America's most versatile essayist, proves an ideal guide to his predecessor. In wry, elegant prose, he engages Tocqueville's intellectual contributions, illuminates the development of his thought, and provides a referendum on his various prophecies. (His record was far from perfect—he thought the federal government would wither away as the states rose in power.) Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide is an altogether human portrait of the Frenchman who would become an American icon.
The New York Times - Christopher Caldwell
"Joseph Epstein's brief Alexis de Tocqueville ... is a brisk and admirably accessible account of how Tocqueville gave a name to certain misgivings about democracy that are with us still."
Publishers Weekly
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), whose Democracy in America is more quoted than read, is the subject of the latest installment in the excellent Eminent Lives series. Tocqueville is fortunate enough to have Epstein (Snobbery: The American Version), another man of letters lighting the way. Epstein provides a penetrating examination of the man, his works, his influence, his times and what we can learn from Democracy in America. Epstein performs sterling service in marshaling the vast amount of material available on this enigmatic 19th-century Frenchman, and gives readers a clear understanding of the immense complexities involved: Tocqueville is much more than a source of useful epigrams and half-remembered misquotes. Was he a conservative, a liberal, a Christian, an agnostic, a historian, a sociologist, a reactionary aristocrat or a radical bourgeois? The answer, Epstein concludes, was that he was all and none; each era has its own understanding of the man, refracted through the particular concerns of the time, lending Tocqueville an aura of timelessness. His exquisite literary sensibility also helps to keep him fresh for each new generation. As an introduction to the man and a primer for his works, Epstein's book is admirable. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Essayist Epstein (Friendship, 2006, etc.) presents his take on America's most quoted, least vexing Frenchman in this latest addition to the Eminent Lives series. In 1831, 26-year-old Count Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville, aristocratic in blood and mien, sailed to the new United States on a voyage of discovery. In less than a year, Tocqueville and his friend Beaumont traveled from Niagara to Nashville, Boston to Pittsburgh, studying America's penal system. The visitors met an emergent middle class, venal politicians, doomed Native Americans, the humble and the eminent. They saw a central government and a federation of states joined in a new form of government. What Tocqueville discovered was equality. Back home, not yet 30, he embarked on his masterwork, Democracy in America. The two-volume work, published in 1835 and 1840, was a sociological prototype and a triumph of political thought. Epstein provides samples of its frequently prescient analysis. A democratic people, Tocqueville noted, would always find two things difficult: "to start a war and to finish it." Were despotism to gain a foothold in democratic nations, he remarked, "it would be more extensive and more mild, and it would degrade men without tormenting them." Expressed in lucid, remarkably nimble prose, his political philosophy has been accessed by liberals and conservatives, democrats and gentry. As Epstein reminds us, Tocqueville's causes were always liberty and human dignity. Though he served as a deputy in the government of Louis-Philippe, he witnessed and reported with measured sympathy on the upheavals of 1848. The Old Regime was published in three years before his death in 1859, but he never completed hisassessment of the French Revolution or Napoleon. A cogent and satisfying primer on the mind of the perspicacious Gallic theorist who discerned a new form of government in America. Agent: Georges Borchardt/Georges Borchardt Inc.
Interesting book: Busy Peoples Super Simple 30 Minute Menus or Toasts for All Occasions
War on Human Trafficking: U. S. Policy Assessed
Author: Anthony M DeStefano
The United States has taken the lead in efforts to end international human trafficking-the movement of peoples from one country to another, usually involving fraud, for the purpose of exploiting their labor. Examples that have captured the headlines include the 300 Chinese immigrants that were smuggled to the United States on the ship Golden Venture and the young Mexican women smuggled by the Cadena family to Florida where they were forced into prostitution and confined in trailers.
The public's understanding of human trafficking is comprised of terrible stories like these, which the media covers in dramatic, but usually short-lived bursts. The more complicated, long-term story of how policy on trafficking has evolved has been largely ignored. In The War on Human Trafficking, Anthony M. DeStefano covers a decade of reporting on the policy battles that have surrounded efforts to abolish such practices, helping readers to understand the forced labor of immigrants as a major global human rights story.
DeStefano details the events leading up to the creation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the federal law that first addressed the phenomenon of trafficking in persons. He assesses the effectiveness of the 2000 law and its progeny, showing the difficulties encountered by federal prosecutors in building criminal cases against traffickers. The book also describes the tensions created as the Bush Administration tried to use the trafficking laws to attack prostitution and shows how the American response to these criminal activities was impacted by the events of September 11th and the War in Iraq.
Parsing politics from practice, this important book gets beyondsensational stories of sexual servitude to show that human trafficking has a much broader scope and is inextricable from the powerful economic conditions that impel immigrants to put themselves at risk.
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