Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America: Their Friendship and Their Travels

Under the guise of investigating the American penal system, Tocqueville and Beaumont spent several months in 1831 and 1832 traveling America in search of the true character of the country's peoples, wildernesses, and democracy. They journeyed through the Great Lakes as far west as Green Bay, Wisc., through the wilds of Tennessee, and down the Mississippi to New Orleans. They were welcomed and feted at the highest levels of society, and their prodigious writings, which display a remarkable talent for close observation, provide a fascinating glimpse into a nascent America. Both men decry a lack of fine arts, an obsession with material wealth, and "barbarous music." They soundly condemn the practice of slavery as not only socially unacceptable but economically disastrous. Equally, the base treatment of Native Americans (they witnessed "relocation" at its very worst) shocked them. This compendium of letters from Zunz and Goldhammer (who previously collaborated on a 2004 volume of Tocqueville's Democracy in America) is not only an exceptional glimpse into 19th-century life in America, but a wonderful and accessible companion to Tocqueville's own classic text. Illustrations. (Jan.)