Democracy in America

‘After the idea of virtue, I know of none more beautiful than that of rights… The idea of rights is nothing other than the idea of virtue introduced into the political sphere.’ Just as we need Fellini from Rimini or Sorrentino from Naples to tell the story of Rome, a foreign perspective is often useful for properly understanding a country. To grasp the grandeur and the anomalies of the American experiment – which marks its 250th anniversary this year – there is no more fitting text than "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville, whose great-grandfather lost his head under the guillotine. Lying in the shade of the proverbial beach umbrella, between crossword puzzles and slices of melon, let us journey alongside a 19th-century Norman liberal who travelled across the country for nine months, seeking to identify the tension between the need for equality and the preservation of individual liberty, whilst comparing its institutions with those of aristocratic Europe.

A guide to understanding how even the finest republic – meticulously designed by world-renowned intellectuals who studied the ancient Romans – can slide inexorably towards forms of mass conformism, crude yet appealing populism, and toxic polarisation, and how to avoid these pitfalls (because it is possible). At one point, Tocqueville says: ‘In America, I have met men who secretly aspire to destroy the democratic institutions of their country’. As the founder of this newspaper once remarked: we Westerners are, after all, ‘pupils of Montesquieu and Tocqueville’. Read it, just as one reads the classics one keeps to enjoy on holiday. (If you have time to spare, carry on with Tocqueville’s “A Journey to America” – the Humboldt Books edition, complete with photographs, is particularly appealing).

Alexis de Tocqueville

Utet, 896 pp., 18 euros