Olivier Zunz

"Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)-who was born in the shadow of the French Revolution and died a few years before the American Civil War-witnessed a remarkable era in the history of the West. His aristocratic family survived the revolutionary period, though many branches were cut down during the Terror, and Alexis grew up with a keen understanding that one world was ending and a new one was being born. Adventurous and curious, he traveled extensively in North America as a young man. There, he trained his observant eyes on his official duties-documenting conditions in the prison system-but became fascinated with America's experiments in democracy. Tocqueville was an avid political theorist, and he recorded his impressions in Democracy in America, still read to this day and considered one of the most provocative and insightful commentaries on the American experience. Tocqueville remained both an intellectual and an active politician for the majority of his life. He watched the revolutions take hold in 1848 across Europe, and he died in 1859, after penning his other famous work, The Old Regime and the Revolution. In this book, Olivier Zunz aims to convey how the world in which Tocqueville lived became his laboratory for political theory. Without downplaying Tocqueville's anxieties about the future, or about democracy's potential pathologies, Zunz places dedication to achieving a new kind of democracy at the center of his subject's life and work. He takes seriously Tocqueville's attempts to apply the lessons of his texts to French politics, and, throughout, he looks to Tocqueville's political career and activism as a guide to the meaning of his major texts. Drawing on his unparalleled familiarity with Tocqueville's own words and letters, Zunz offers a definitive biography of a remarkable thinker whose life formed a ligature between the ancien régime and the emerging democratic age"--

The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville

The Man Who Understood Democracy

American philanthropy today expands knowledge, champions social movements, defines active citizenship, influences policymaking, and addresses humanitarian crises. How did philanthropy become such a powerful and integral force in American society? Philanthropy in America is the first book to explore in depth the twentieth-century growth of this unique phenomenon. Ranging from the influential large-scale foundations established by tycoons such as John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and the mass mobilization of small donors by the Red Cross and March of Dimes, to the recent social advocacy of individuals like Bill Gates and George Soros, respected historian Olivier Zunz chronicles the tight connections between private giving and public affairs, and shows how this union has enlarged democracy and shaped history. Zunz looks at the ways in which American philanthropy emerged not as charity work, but as an open and sometimes controversial means to foster independent investigation, problem solving, and the greater good. Andrew Carnegie supported science research and higher education, catapulting these fields to a prominent position on the world stage. In the 1950s, Howard Pew deliberately funded the young Billy Graham to counter liberal philanthropies, prefiguring the culture wars and increased philanthropic support for religious causes. And in the 1960s, the Ford Foundation supported civil rights through education, voter registration drives, and community action programs. Zunz argues that American giving allowed the country to export its ideals abroad after World War II, and he examines the federal tax policies that unified the diverse nonprofit sector. Demonstrating that America has cultivated and relied on philanthropy more than any other country, Philanthropy in America examines how giving for the betterment of all became embedded in the fabric of the nation's civic democracy.

A History

Philanthropy in America

A study of the impact of corporate middle-level managers and white collar workers on American society and culture. An extended essay on social change based on case studies of a wide range of participants in the emerging corporate culture of the early 1900s. Zunz is in the history department at the U. of Virginia. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Making America Corporate, 1870-1920

Alexis de Tocqueville

Arthur Goldhammer

Gustave de Beaumont

A selection of Tocqueville's writings on America together with letters and sketches from his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont.

Their Friendship and Their Travels

Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America

A definitive biography of the French aristocrat who became one of democracy’s greatest champions In 1831, at the age of twenty-five, Alexis de Tocqueville made his fateful journey to America, where he observed the thrilling reality of a functioning democracy. From that moment onward, the French aristocrat would dedicate his life as a writer and politician to ending despotism in his country and bringing it into a new age. In this authoritative and groundbreaking biography, leading Tocqueville expert Olivier Zunz tells the story of a radical thinker who, uniquely charged by the events of his time, both in America and France, used the world as a laboratory for his political ideas. Placing Tocqueville’s dedication to achieving a new kind of democracy at the center of his life and work, Zunz traces Tocqueville’s evolution into a passionate student and practitioner of liberal politics across a trove of correspondence with intellectuals, politicians, constituents, family members, and friends. While taking seriously Tocqueville’s attempts to apply the lessons of Democracy in America to French politics, Zunz shows that the United States, and not only France, remained central to Tocqueville’s thought and actions throughout his life. In his final years, with France gripped by an authoritarian regime and America divided by slavery, Tocqueville feared that the democratic experiment might be failing. Yet his passion for democracy never weakened. Giving equal attention to the French and American sources of Tocqueville’s unique blend of political philosophy and political action, The Man Who Understood Democracy offers the richest, most nuanced portrait yet of a man who, born between the worlds of aristocracy and democracy, fought tirelessly for the only system that he believed could provide both liberty and equality.

Alan S. Kahan

The Tocqueville Reader includes not only Tocqueville's major writing but also travel letters, conversations with ministers and politicians, and diary entries not originally intended for the public. It includes twenty-nine pieces never before translated into English, and a wide-ranging editorial introduction that gives an account of Tocqueville's life as a politician and inspirations as a writer.

A Life in Letters and Politics

The Tocqueville Reader

Preface: "The New Colossus"Pt. 1: Making the Century AmericanCh. 1: Producers, Brokers, and Users of Knowledge Ch. 2: Defining Tools of Social Intelligence Ch. 3: Inventing the Average American Pt. 2: The Social Contract of the MarketCh. 4: Turning out Consumers Ch. 5: Deradicalizing Class Pt. 3: Embattled IdentitiesCh. 6: From Voluntarism to Pluralism Ch. 7: Enlarging the Polity Pt. 4: Exporting American Principles Ch. 8: Individualism and Modernization Ch. 9: The Power of Uncertainty Acknowledgments Notes Index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Olivier Zunz

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