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.”

Tags: History Travel, Literature, Politics, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is the senior editor of World Hum. She is an associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and her writing has also appeared in Reader's Digest Canada, NationalGeographic.com, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen and WestJet's Up! Magazine, among other publications. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


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