James Poulos

Most of us probably don't learn about Alexis de Tocqueville in school anymore, but his masterpiece, Democracy in America, is still surprisingly resonant. When he came to America in 1831 to study our great political experiment, he puzzled over our strange struggles with religion and politics, work and money, sex and gender, and love and death. Clearly we haven't come as far as one might hope. But it wasn't all doom and gloom-and it isn't now. Tocqueville...