The blurbs on the jacket of this book are unusually misleading. A U.S. senator avers that it ‘conveys a sweep of historical analysis that gives us deep insight… into the American character’, and ‘sheds light on America's present and possible future as well as its past’. Since it contains virtually no historical or sociological evidence about the United States, it is hard to see how it might do this. One Harvard professor calls it ‘a major work of political theory’, and another ‘an enduring work of political theory in its own right’. But while the author conveys his disaffection with contemporary American democracy, he nowhere clearly and succinctly formulates anything that might reasonably be called a theory. A Johns Hopkins professor thinks that it ‘shows us how pertinent Tocqueville remains for democrats today’. Incidentally, it may perhaps do this, though this is hardly the author's intent, since he emphasizes the archaic and feudal quality of Tocqueville's final account of democracy.