Reader, in this volume we compiled the most outstanding works of the famed writer Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859). A historian and statesman, de Tocqueville’s foundational work, Democracy in America (1835, 1840) featured an educated, novel analysis of the state-political structure and spiritual life of the United States of America. The book uses a complex fusion of travel notes, research, philosophical essays, and journalism to describe the birth of the American Nation, which literally transformed before his eyes from a frontier on the “edge of civilization” to a New World power impacting European politics.

His 1856 book, The Old Regime and the Revolution, examined the period of the French Revolution. In trying to flesh out its origins, de Tocqueville found that the old order that existed prior to the revolution had been all but forgotten. He had to delve into the archives and reconstruct the image of “old” France. Without a proper understanding of the interplay between the aristocrats and bourgeois, it was impossible to explain why the Revolution took place and why it played out as it did. His book not only shed light on the French revolution, it also created a new scientific method for studying the origins and character of a revolt.