Alexis de Tocqueville: Bad Traveler?

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  04.19.10 | 11:06 AM ET

A new book on Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous American travels is out. Slate’s Francois Furstenburg parses the new material and takes a second look at the trip that inspired Democracy in America. He writes:

“[W]e learn that Tocqueville would not have made a very good traveling companion. “Repose was contrary to his nature,” [his companion Gustave de] Beaumont later recalled. “The slightest loss of time was unpleasant to him. ... [H]e was always leaving before he arrived.”


Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


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