Chasing Alexis de Tocqueville

What if Alexis de Tocqueville were traveling through the United States today? How would the French writer’s observations about the American character compare with those on his 1831 journey, which formed the basis of his classic book Democracy in America? Writer David Cohen, who is British and South African, set out to learn the answer and chronicled his findings in a new book, Chasing the Red, White and Blue. Cohen retraced Tocqueville’s steps, talking to Americans along the way, reflecting on equality, multiculturalism and the legacy of slavery.

And he checked out Silicon Valley, too. A Los Angeles Times critic liked the result: “Cohen’s book is a lively, easy-to-read piece of analytical journalism, packed with anecdotes and statistics as well as quotations from ‘Democracy in America’ and Tocqueville’s other writings.”

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