Democracy in America » (1st Edition)

Isaac Kramnick is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University. His many books include Bolingbroke and His Circle, The Rage of Edmund Burke, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism, Harold Laski: A Life on the Left, and most recently, with R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State.

The Norton Critical Edition presents Tocqueville’s classic text in the Henry Reeve translation.

Booknews

<:st> Political philosophers Mansfield (government, Harvard U.) and Winthrop (constitutional government, Harvard U.) present a new translation<-->only the third since the original two-volume work was published in 1835 and 1840<-->aiming to restore the nuances of Tocqueville's language. Tocqueville himself was not satisfied with the 19th-century translation; the other, prepared in the late 1960s (Harper & Row), is cited in This translation is based on a recent critical French edition (Editions Gallimard, 1992). Mansfield and Winthrop provide a substantial introduction placing the work and its author in historical and philosophical context, as well as annotations elucidating references that are no longer familiar to readers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)