Tocqueville Unveiled : The Historian and His Sources for The Old Regime and the Revolution

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Summary: Tocqueville Unveiled
Review: This is an outstanding book. It will become essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in Tocqueville and will prove useful as well for those with more general interests in history.

The author has made use of a wide range of sources; but, most importantly, he has gained unpresidented access to thousands of pages of Tocqueville's own notes, perserved and guarded by the Tocqueville family. With careful detective work, Gannett reveals a coherent, inciteful, cleanly written picture both of Tocqueville's personal development and of Tocqueville's concealed motives in writing The Old Regime and the Revolution.

As the flyleaf notes, in addition to being a Tocqueville scholar, Gannett is a community organizer. Those reading this book in search of explicit, practical lessons for modern politics may be disappointed. Still, the lessons are there for non-accademics willing to invest in a reflective reading of this academic work. For those who are amateur or professional historians, this book is a gem.