Part of the Eminent Lives series.I should have made this more clear, the book I'm currently reading is:

http://www.amazon.com/Alexis-Tocquev.../dp/0060598980

I've read Democracy in America probably 10-12 times. For a French man, Tocqueville rocked. J/K PE! This new book gives considerable insight into the young nobleman who captured so much of what a new country was like.

For anyone who is going to read Democracy, I'd suggest getting this first. It will give you much more insight into what was happening in US and what made Tocqueville see and describe the way he did.

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"We are fighting today for our life, for our liberty, for our all, we cannot go on being led as we are. Somehow or other, we must get into the Government men who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory."~Leo Amery 1940, while staring at Chamberlain

Great book for sure.

and it gives comparisons for France too (the France of the XIXth c. ).

With his studies about America, Tocqueville critisized the french institutions of the XIXth, pulled the finger on some contradictions... and took the example of USA to show that some fears of the French were not justified (like the "fear of the judge", in France, since the Revolution of 1789, the administration had some suspicion against judges, it thought that the judges, if they would be able to know about the administration acts, would paralyze it with a lot of judgement, of sue, traductions.... And that the people would abuse of the possibility to sue the administrator. Tocqueville said that it was not the described mess in USA).

Great author, definitly.

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Pro rege saepe, pro patria semper (Colbert)

Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit (Terence)

"If one needed only the arms against the French, we would be victorious, the French are small, weak ; only one of our Germans would beat four of them; but they become with the fire supernatural beings." writing in 1806 by a Prussian officer after Iena and Auerstaedt