About the Author

Arthur Goldhammer is the award-winning translator of more than eighty French works in history, literature, art history, classical studies, philosophy, psychology, and social science. Olivier Zunz is Commonwealth Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and the author of numerous books including Why the American Century? He has also co-edited The Tocqueville Reader (Blackwell) and is president of the Tocqueville Society.

Reviews

Winner of the 2004 Translation Prize awarded by the French-American Foundation

“This new translation by Goldhammer gets to the heart of Tocqueville’s words.”
—Library Journal

“It’s hard to think of a work that has so influenced our understanding of the United States as this—still the most authoritative, reflective set of observations about American institutions and the American character ever written . . . this translation by Goldhammer, the dean of American translators from the French, accomplishes what it’s hard to believe possible: it lends to this unalterably grave work some zest. Never slipping into slang, it gives a colloquial cast, fitting for our time, to a work normally rendered only with high solemnity. The Library of America claims that its editions will stay in print forever. This one’s likely to stand that test.”
—Publishers Weekly