Trailer: Tocqueville Road Trip
6/23/20263 min
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America from France in 1831 he saw a new kind of society. Not just a country, but an idea that would change the world. His book “Democracy in America” was a big influence on later generations of writers and thinkers, including The Economist’s US Editor John Prideaux. Now, 250 years after its birth, the vitality of that democracy is under question. In this series, John retraces the route Tocqueville took to find out how much of what inspired Tocqueville about America remains—and how worried we should be about what’s changed.
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First 90 secondsJohn Prideaux· Host0:03
Alexis de Tocqueville is the nearest thing foreign correspondents have to a superhero. He arrived in America on a boat from France in May 1831, a young aristocrat on a mission. The US was still a long way off being a superpower back then. It was barely 50 years old. But Tocqueville caught a glimpse of what it could become, a new kind of society that would give the world a spectacle for which history had not prepared it, a land with no kings or queens, where citizens made the rules. And so he set off on a nine-month road trip to figure out how it worked. He spoke to Americans from all walks of life. He filled up 14 notebooks and dozens of letters with his observations. Then he returned to France and wrote a book called Democracy in America. For my money, it's still the single most insightful thing ever written about the United States. [gentle music] I'm John Prideaux, the US editor for The Economist. That book has been my companion since I first arrived in Washington as a correspondent 13 years ago. Tocqueville's big insight was that America was much more than a country. It was an idea, one with the power to