Book Review

In 1960 Sheldon S. Wolin published Politics and Vision, a sweeping, influential exploration of the entire corpus of Western political thought. In it, Alexis de Tocqueville received barely a passing mention. Four decades later Wolin has perhaps overcompensated for that earlier snub with the massive book under review, which is an effort to situate Tocqueville at the epicenter of modern political theory.

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Because of the book's size and scope, it is important to understand what it is not attempting to accomplish. It is not, first of all, a work directed primarily toward historians. "I have tried to present a Tocqueville who is not so firmly in the French intellectual and political context of his times as to be irrelevant to ours," the author accurately asserts. Nor is Wolin much concerned with debating other scholars. Indeed, he discusses major issues in Tocqueville studies extensively without reference to recent scholarly debates. Thus he writes about Tocqueville and theory without alluding to Bruce Frohnen, women without Linda Kerber, penitentiaries without Roger Boesche. And on certain key issues Wolin is silent entirely. In spite of the importance Wolin attaches to Tocqueville's journeys, for example, readers will find no discussion of England, Ireland, Algeria, or Sicily. Imperialism is likewise a void. Tocqueville's English wife, Mary Mottley, is completely absent.

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