The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville

Cheryl B. Welch

oct 2006 · Cambridge University Press

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The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville contains a set of critical interpretive essays by internationally renowned scholars on the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. The essays cover Tocqueville's major themes (liberty, equality, democracy, despotism, civil society, religion) and texts (Democracy in America, Recollections, Old Regime and the Revolution, other important reports, speeches and letters). The authors analyze both Tocqueville's contributions as a theorist of modern democracy and his craft as a writer. Collections of secondary work on Tocqueville have tended to fall into camps, either bringing together only scholars from one point of view or discipline, or treating only one major text. This Companion transcends national, ideological, disciplinary, and textual boundaries to bring together the best in recent Tocqueville scholarship. The essays not only introduce Tocqueville's major themes and texts, but also put forward provocative arguments that advance the field of Tocqueville studies.

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Cheryl Welch received her MA and PhD from Columbia University. She is the author of Liberty and Utility: The French Idéologues and the Transformation of Liberalism and De Tocqueville and editor of Critical Issues in Social Thought with Murray Milgate. She has also written numerous articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, and History of European Ideas. She has received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation, and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, at Harvard Law School, and at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.