Reading Democracy in America Now

Wednesday, September 10—Two centuries on, Alexis de Tocqueville’s brilliant Democracy in America remains the most prescient account of the virtues, and potential dangers, of our politics and culture. How do Tocqueville’s insights illuminate current events and political trends, both at home and abroad? Join four distinguished scholars for a lively debate on the continued resonance of this enduring masterpiece: Yale professor Joanne Freeman (acclaimed author of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War), Pulitzer Prize–winning NYU historian Steven Hahn (Illiberal America: A History), Harvard’s James T. Kloppenberg (Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought), and Olivier Zunz, Commonweath Professor at the University of Virginia and editor of the definitive LOA edition of Democracy in America, featuring Arthur Goldhammer’s celebrated translation.