A simplistic polemic that reduces de Tocqueville to jingoistic sloganeering.
American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Ledeen (Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, 1999, etc.) relates assorted selections from de Tocqueville’s writings from the 1830s to current American politics.
De Tocqueville was a wry and perceptive observer of the US in a tumultuous era, and his critique of Jacksonian democracy had a fresh, outsider’s perspective. A French aristocrat, he was simultaneously intrigued by egalitarian ideals in action and keenly aware of the ironies and paradoxes they engendered. The seemingly boundless opportunities that America promised, he argued, could not allow every citizen to realize his goals solely through individual effort. “When men are nearly alike, and all follow the same track,” he warned in Democracy in America, “it is very difficult for any one individual to walk quick and cleave a way through the same throng which surrounds and presses him.” However, the subtleties of de Tocqueville’s analysis get short shrift here. Instead, Ledeen links arbitrary snippets to long, vacuous rants on a range of topical issues, from the role of religion in public life (unfairly constrained by rampant atheism, he charges) to moral corruption (rampant, especially among liberals and intellectuals). In Ledeen’s reading, de Tocqueville unequivocally endorsed geographic and social mobility, rugged individualism, voluntary associations, religious faith, and, above all, the Horatio Alger narrative of upward mobility. This interpretation is made possible by his stout refusal to consider the selected passages in the context of the subtle and often ironic essay in which they originally appeared, let alone take into account the particular historical setting in which de Tocqueville wrote. Sometimes the flimsy premise breaks down altogether: when de Tocqueville voices his pessimism or reveals paradoxes too unequivocally to ignore (stating, for example, that “freedom of opinion does not exist in America”), Ledeen simply disregards the philosopher’s judgment, concluding that “de Tocqueville underestimated the stubbornly anticonformist individualism embedded in the American character.”
A simplistic polemic that reduces de Tocqueville to jingoistic sloganeering.Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-25231-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Not flawless, but one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.
Remarkably comprehensive and coherent analysis of and prescriptions for America’s contemporary economic malaise by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Smith (Rethinking America, 1995, etc.).
“Over the past three decades,” writes the author, “we have become Two Americas.” We have arrived at a new Gilded Age, where “gross inequality of income and wealth” have become endemic. Such inequality is not simply the result of “impersonal and irresistible market forces,” but of quite deliberate corporate strategies and the public policies that enabled them. Smith sets out on a mission to trace the history of these strategies and policies, which transformed America from a roughly fair society to its current status as a plutocracy. He leaves few stones unturned. CEO culture has moved since the 1970s from a concern for the general well-being of society, including employees, to the single-minded pursuit of personal enrichment and short-term increases in stock prices. During much of the ’70s, CEO pay was roughly 40 times a worker’s pay; today that number is 367. Whether it be through outsourcing and factory closings, corporate reneging on once-promised contributions to employee health and retirement funds, the deregulation of Wall Street and the financial markets, a tax code which favors overwhelmingly the interests of corporate heads and the superrich—all of which Smith examines in fascinating detail—the American middle class has been left floundering. For its part, government has simply become an enabler and partner of the rich, as the rich have turned wealth into political influence and rigid conservative opposition has created the politics of gridlock. What, then, is to be done? Here, Smith’s brilliant analyses turn tepid, as he advocates for “a peaceful political revolution at the grassroots” to realign the priorities of government and the economy but offers only the vaguest of clues as to how this might occur.
Not flawless, but one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6966-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
