{"product_id":"american-journey-traveling-with-tocqueville-in-search-of-democracy-in-america-9780671470678","title":"American Journey: Traveling With Tocqueville in Search of Democracy in America","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1831  Alexis de Tocqueville began a nine-month journey in search of what he later called \"Democracy in America.\" Using Tocquevilles original notes  Richard Reeves retraced those travels  going to the same places to find the modern counterparts of the Americans of the 1830s.Tocqueville and Reeves both began their journeys in Newport  Rhode Island  and then traveled through new York and Philadelphia  crisscrossing the country to Michigan in the north and Louisiana in the south. But Tocquevilles ride from the St. Clair River to the wilderness of Saginaw Bay became  for Reeves  a walk into the wildness of Detroit.Tocquevilles conversations with an embittered ex-President  John Quincy Adams  echoed over the years when Reeves asked similar questions of Richard Nixon. Tocqueville interviewed the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence  Charles Carroll  the richest man in America. Reeves traced the signers lineage to the direct descendant who was not admitted to the great medical school that stands on an old family estate.Who are these nomad people  the Americans? How does this democracy of theirs work? Tocqueville asked and answered those questions in his time  and Reeves asked them again of the governors and the governed  of presidents and priests  of laborers and lawyers  in offices in Washington  prison cells in Philadelphia  banks in Manhattan  and classrooms in Boston and Los Angeles.Ultimately  the American is more optimistic than the Frenchman was. Tocqueville believed that a democratic people could never rise above themselves and their own petty demands and hatreds. Reeves discovered  almost with astonishment  a people better than his predictions  better than their leaders--and  at their best  almost as good as their ideals.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45951484002357,"sku":"ByrdShop_0671470671","price":62.61,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780671470678.jpg?v=1788109431","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/american-journey-traveling-with-tocqueville-in-search-of-democracy-in-america-9780671470678","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}