>> after the talk this evening we will have time for questions. please note c-span2 booktv

is here this morning see were giving consent for your voice for broadcast. we will end with a signing add to this table and anyone who purchases a copy of the book they cue to support your local independent bookstore and the this authors series. please join me in welcoming leo damrosch. [applause] >> thank you very much. rachel it is a pleasure to speak at this wonderful store for the last 20 years. as she described it a nine month journey oliver the united states under primitive conditions in 1831 through 1832 tocqueville and his good friend who took that trip with him were in their mid-20s hunted magistrates with a career they hoped was a lot and

government but the 1830 revolution had just happen but because they were aristocrats by birth and the families are intensively conservative wanted the monarchy back of the employers were suspicious of there loyalty and they thought it might be good to get out of france and thought what could be good so they had the arrangement to go steady the american penitentiary system which is not going to be a good system but then it was a breakthrough jails all over europe were holding tanks were prisoners of both sexes charged with everything from picking pockets to killing people were thrown together teaching each other criminal techniques in the a.d. at dave prisoner may repent might come out a better human being was a novel

program. in france the prisons were totally controlled from the central administration it was inconceivable and in america there were local arrangements and that was the idea. but really they wanted to study democracy. they both believed deeply that it was the future and it would not be reversed and where francis seemed frighteningly unstable but was a dirty word because everybody remember the terror of the french revolution collapsing into and the parents missed by three days going to the guillotine because when rose pierre felt they were led out instead of killed his father was 21 and his hair had gone completely white then the father of the dictatorship of napoleon despotism.

why was america so stable? this was ready to close agenda. it was my own voyage of discovery that we devour books about the founders of really don't read so much about jacksonian america which is totally different from any recent history and from that quite old-fashioned view of the world founders' he was the first populist president in office since 1828 expanding enormously from the hinterland and extremely commercial and also egalitarian to say that tocqueville saw this from the start however the gulf between rich and poor but you were born into a status

of which you might not rise. the principles might change their life and this was the ideology really that the new to him but almost inspiring. partly because one of tocqueville city favorite authors and i will mention how that was so. but what has always interested me is ideas which seem like abstractions always a rise from people's experience which is certainly true as we try to show in the biography of him and it was true of tocqueville. bedroom in his own the but what he learns from american people. democracy in america was written deliberately in the remote way and meant to be dispassionate to intervene with a very turbulent

politics. but tocqueville was a complicated rather volatile, a somewhat melancholy character. but with many more sides to his temperament than the perfected style he had for his political rating and incredibly good listener. so much that informs democracy of america it is not through the meditation that comes directly from the people he talked to all the way from john quincy adams about to enter the house of representatives, probably the american that impressed tocqueville the most of the way to india and chief the pioneer for mercy listen to anybody to tell him. as shawn said in that review, they were very human young men and interested in

women and flirted all the time with american girls. i saw that tocqueville was into hot american checks. [laughter] but what struck them that american women were much freer with men than the heavily chaperon french girls, they did not seem to act upon it. there was not proved but a more repression in america that they tried to understand. it developed into a deeper insight. i will not go into this topic at length but to the family is given a moral centrality, emotional heart of american experience as a counterweight and the way sexual relations were treated he thought was of so we generated by this social

demand and not just inherited from the plurality the way people thought to. a little bit about the breaking misdial translates to these translations were stodgy and staff because he did cultivate a very classical french style balance and rather abstract if you put it straight into english should does sound dull but it is very eloquent and french in his riding who will and other places often quite romantic and quite eloquent i have tried hard to make him speak with a more human voice i would try to give you a more examples later this evening pri realized what an advantage

that was most were middle-class englishmen and women and without meaning to be it snobs they fed every american is someone is the of which will guarantee it just three to on their ears so they fervor put americans down in ways that are unjust and inappropriate one of the worst is frances trollope wrote a book denouncing america after she went home which is the famous novelist and she collected americanism she paid to them goes whole hog. keep cool mother i know a thing or two. what is so bad about that? tocqueville liked it because he did not have the in newalliance but it is of the intelligent foreigner and a lot of the british visitor stock they receive religious

when it was obvious they had their legs pulled a wonderful exception deserves to re-read more than it is. talking about right teeing in a stage coach hearing about somebody is a smart fellow and said he could not see through a ladder. [laughter] but he was interested in the terminology that had no translation in french because he saw how profoundly symptomatic it was. for example, in france and the adult mail he was very struck how the term had evolves to and said they don't have the word peasant. not someone who can own his

own band or a sharecropper ready to survive at these subsistence level. said americans prefer to be called the help. they're doing their part and the employer is paying them and not born into the servant class and certainly don't have the word lackey. americans don't have masters with the of the exception of the slave owners to see terminology the spoke to the american character. a little bit about the trip began in new york city and had to do those people far and away the biggest in america and boston was next but not the new york that we no.

the streets and did not exist everything north of canal street was farmland with a deer road and at one point somebody met on a ship coming over invited them to the east river there is no skyline. is just one single story as far as the eye can see but already a commercial beehive inouye the way anybody talked about scrambling to make a fortune that the same time exhilarated did not care where it came from and

the entrepreneurship and tocqueville actually responded and warrant warmly about a and it is a very interesting passage it was just both maybe if the workers came out everyday in the gaming san broke stones there would be doing something useful for society as long as they never spoke. amazingly enough under threat two of a ferocious lashing the natalee never open their mouth her not even expose -- supposed to exchange glances santo the was fascinated of the thousand prisoners in a moment could have jumped to the guards and kill them all we're kept in subservience because they were helpless to gather together and make

a play and. in the midst of the land of the free was the it under despotism eighth puzzling paradox he wrote about it at some length what he was seeing is the penitentiary was not just a form of incarceration but the symptom of modern bureaucratic organization with modern surveillance like a spider in the middle of the web to see what is going on every where. it was structural and a conceptual development not just a place to put criminals. after that they were desperate to get out and see the hinterland of was once driving with a friend he

said recall that the home office every have the almost unexplored middle of the continent was thrilling. grown up reading the novels of cooper and desperate to see native americans and the first ones they met were very discouraging. iroquois showed up in buffalo to give their paycheck word just appallingly frighten away drunk and c&s civilization was destroying what was a noble race but when they got into the north woods, they saw the chippewa indians living exactly as the ancestors had with complete confidence in a forest where we would have starved to death because we did not know what to do reversing the power of the relationship of civilization. they sought day no ability

to assimilate it might mean they might to eventually lose everything but their way of life was too important. he was impressed by that he and beaumont hired horse is a and went about 100 miles into the north would scott s. rs pontiac fur trading post and on the way they had a sense of what the continent was like when only the indians live there and tocqueville wrote a moving account 15 days 22 weeks in the wilderness it is a very human center word but to have the word wilderness it is a very beautiful volume and poetic us say.

is also adventurists and lost in the dark and as day approached the theater that rises up where they keep bears for the watchdogs coming in and welcome the ems as for the course is to see it introduced two the bair and later after they were up two pontiac speaking french or english and the bair agreed to us like old friends. but it was time to get on with their trip. to give you a sense from a different voice of the one you have had. this is in the middle of the forest. bid day when the sun beats down, oslo here at a

alongside the plaintive cries that goes into the distance it is the last of the dying wind then all-around do everything subsides into a silence so profound that the soul is penetrated and fell luck to the beauty of nature and at peace with yourself in the midst of universal peace with the steady beat team of your arteries seems to mark the passage of time drop by drop into eternity. big issue out of sight into this extraordinary man. thought this was the best of the old france but then came to boston telling you about that saying it was much more like paris not like new york failed of the class not like

oliver wendell holmes. but what struck them however privileged to the people were in the beacon hill mansion nevertheless there were fully integrated the way french aristocrats were refusing to be including their own families in fact, the ancestors had created very well informed people asking questions much like there's that of silly underpinned said democracy in america. four examples quickly. john quincy adams, was an example of the old and dying by deal of civic virtue that you give your life selflessly for your nation, a party, a faction are noble and a new kind of

populist potash garnering majority rule that jacksonian van yearend administration was repellent and tocqueville admired him rather than compromise the principal and really was an impressive noble monument of a man but at the same time a bit of a living fossil he no longer sit-in and very uneasy about the future of this country. having serious talks about slavery, a very many people told tocqueville one way or another this will lead to a catastrophic civil war 30 years before it happens but the initial tectonics' shocks were happening in the 1830's. quincey was president of harvard they did not visit it was just a prep school. giving the idea of that was

sentral that the colonies were self-governing. how could they not be? it took month and a half for a ship to get here. it could not we micromanage milan told the americans conducted their own affairs and the american in township was self-governing and existed before they ever gathered together to be massachusetts sell under democratic self-rule, a couple centuries-old but in france they tried to do it overnight changing the months of the year and it caved but francis lieber as a distinguished political scientist he had fought at the battle of waterloo and shot through the neck and chest and left for dead and

revived a and sent back to germany and thrown into jail for political radicalism than when he got out immigrated to boston for he became an editor, writer and a student of american politics and culture as the intelligent outsider who would mired american it and gave tocqueville the concept that democracy is a state of mind not just the legal system, not the constitution as a formal set of promises, and emotional face. a bonding and commitment to the spirit of the whole and this is much like the social contract that says the only way to be a true social contract a real shared commitment has to be if everybody feels in some way it speaks for them, a common

mean in describing something much like that with american democracy. and also coining the phrase habits of the heart. but as it is emphasized not just the motions but the values and attitudes in believes that make up the culture. of a guy named jared sparks gave to both the adm of the majority, the enormous power of the majority to control if not the actual thinking of everybody but to make them uneasy about rocking the boat because they may be ostracized to feel that they be long. and sparks was irritated. he just said the majority in the legislature may pass a law. let them win the next

election day he found something more important. the way in france there is a very rigid governmental repression you could ban the all kinds of crazy political ideas around because nobody thought they would be put into practice but in america you could not advance ideas that nobody shared. that was the inside. they went to philadelphia that was less interesting to them but the place that turned to tocqueville on and more than any other was ohio. we find a democracy without limit to say boston was a traditionalist coulter with a cast a custom 22 privilege even if it did to cooperate in a way with the people the

whole of the aristocrats in france would not put cincinnati was full of people who just got there yesterday the streets were named. everything was in turmoil prevent the beginning of the 19th century had 50,000 people and now had 1 million and of them had just come from somewhere else. a perfect example that you could never know this. there was a 23 year-old lawyer who just arrived from new hampshire and put off by the crassness of the frontier life because it was literally almost the frontier and thinking of going into politics purpose so degrading you cannot get elected unless you get drunk and tocqueville roche believe there not people in this part of the country have elected a person called david crockett who cannot even read. but it is possible at the

national level things will be more hopeful. his name was the senator from ohio then the governor then lincoln's secretary of treasury and the chief justice of the u.s. supreme court. and tocqueville saw that a person like that had an opening too any kind of possibilities and the west he probably would not have had back home. somebody told him that at that time 36 members of the house of representatives were born in connecticut. it only had five representatives of its own so the rest have spanned out to make careers and had done it successfully. one of the brilliant things he put his finger on is the importance of the frontier that turner made the center of a famous book it was not

just a line on the map but a way of being and kept advancing further westward and made possible the egalitarian energy and hopeful the sec could not have existed even in america bacchae sell abraham lincoln that was completely unknown teaching myself math lincoln and injured jackson came from complete property had minimal the gold training and deduct audience of the history that is what tocqueville was perceiving would be possible. the trip continue to have the romantic aspects. they traveled mostly on steamboat's. the highways were hopeless. the water raise is how you moved about the country. they were thrilling because

it was the most brutal winter in 50 years unfortunately and ohio froze solid just before they were shipwrecked and they thought they would drowned they shook hands and said farewell and then it landed on a rock so they said you better get two the mississippi to go to and negative go and it was up through their waste tocqueville got a terrible fever they had to spend one week in a log cabin and finally got to memphis, tennessee was still frozen and to spend one week shootings parakeets now that is probably the extinction of the parakeet that no longer exist.

and here is a person from serendipity. just as the capt. tries to make up his mind what to do with the beating of drums the bedraggled men come emerging from the forest one of the very first installments of the infamous trail of tears been deported to oklahoma so the captain except the wages to take these people aboard they're almost dying of cold and tokyo is appalled and fascinated by the spectacle. are read wonder two sentences of his description estimate the era of destruction something that felt like a final furrow of no return in one could not look without a polling of the heart.

the indians were somber and silent one of the new english rice and wire them the being their country? he said to be free but i could not get him to say anything more. it was a coincidence that prada is here to witness the expulsion follow last remnants of one of the most celebrated ancient american nations. then to talk about serendipity, as they put the indians ashore on the arkansas side a big man on a white stallion came galloping up and took passage with them and it was sam houston who had been governor of tennessee but left there after a miracle scandal not yet the hero of texas and new them very well and had taken a native rear kin, lavalife on his way to washington to persuade injured jackson to

greet -- treats the indian people better and they have long conversations and found him to be an extremely thoughtful person and it was the heart of the 100 page chapter on race relations. at one extreme is the indian who cannot surrender total liberty, and never ordered around and will not accept it he will lose his life rather than surrender. the other extreme is the black slave to do is not know what it would be to be freed or to make a conscious choice and it is tragic they have lost their religion internet to their ancestral language, not assimilated into the white people who will not accept them and do not belong anywhere with a number of moving stories. when it brought back to france, he needed to do a lot more reading and

thinking with plenty of materials full of books he had collected but he wanted to understand much more deeply than is called the second to turney and took him four years to finish the first half of democracy in america which was a first time hit and another five years for the second half so it is no wonder it is a prodigious monument flow of ideas that not only deepen but demerged as he went on reading and thinking during the final years and a couple of examples, one he celebrates clearly the thing that that was most inspired which was the local initiative that in france if you wanted to of the town hall you had to go to paris to get a and officials ruling and mountains of red tape and it was two years

later and in america they do it if we decide we want a new road it was up the local level. the country will get bigger and more powerful and bureaucratic and will have to have a huge army will have to fight wars against other nations and people may think they don't want a big controlling government but each of them once something from the government they are willing to accept them buy the time you're done it will swell into something enormously powerful which was prophetic the true. even more profound was his insight into what might happen with the, one kind of condition in the producer is not the old despotism in which a tire branch rules from above with great force but in which the people of

allow themselves to be rolled in their own self-interest with a kind of despotism and it certainly leaves to what george orwell would describe over one century later and read one example of what tocqueville says it and his "tocqueville's discovery of america" that alone takes charge to watch over their fate to record it white citizens to enjoy themselves so all they think about is that. it labors for their happiness but once to be the fall agent and the sovereign power does not break their will but directs them and really compels auction but constantly opposes action and does not tyrannize but hinders, represses and restraints and gnomes until it reduces each nation to a

flock of industrious animals with government as their shepherd. read one more paragraph one of the most haunting and resonant, talking of the enemy he thinks will somehow overcome americans for all of their energy and independence. >> when inequality is the common lot of society as in france the greatest and equality does not strike the eye when everything more or less the straight -- slightest inequality is wounding that is why the desire becomes more in setian all with democratic people to attain a certain of all they cannot maintain the quality bay desire and as it receives they believe they will seize it then it escapes their grasp for the seasonal mellon collie that democratic countries experience in the bosom of

abundance. i will pause there. if you like to ask any questions i will be delighted to respond is it. [applause] >> [inaudible] >> he thought he did beds they realized we're not understanding with the people are telling us so they knock themselves out trying to improve in a letter he sent home he said we are putting ourselves through torture to who learned english and there is a pretty american and girl who helps with the torture. [laughter] but even in new york i got fed day of the week-long and did not show up for a being quiet but he was a good linguistic and his girlfriend back home that he eventually married although they mostly spoke french by

the time he left america i think it had a funny flavor but i think it was perfectly a good enough to understand why have been trying to translate when translators have a american speaking they forget they are translating his french and putting it back into english. it is possible without changing what they say to make it sound more authentic it. >> what do you think he would find with the sense of democracy now? and what would he find is the same? >> that is a good question because after he got back to france he got back into politics in earnest. he was above mere politics

when he came here and i think he came to see the reason for parties and compromise and for democracy to succeed cannot be as high minded as franklin and jefferson wanted it to be. he would not have been shocked by a lot of things stand in fact, he liked to senators for every state and elected by state legislatures to the 20th century became a popular but he was not a believer in total democracy neither was henry adams one generation later. but and i think he would be completely bewildered that has changed so much. he said the future will always be unforeseeable.

>> considering a number of people who have observed americans during a general point* and did tocqueville really seize on this and could understand the momentum in this direction because of the slavery issue among the other massive contradictions that he observed the was not overly judgmental but, obviously you rank him very highly in terms of his perception and abilities to perceive the cultural dynamics. and what about way out front in terms of other people? >> making a grand tour through america and it is flow of great writing and is projected three strong yen

prisons 10 tocqueville did believe keeping prisoners in this place and being much more sympathetic to the despair of the solitary confinement. you are not even allowed to see other people they tried to do complete isolation and they went completely crazy so they would teach them to do a shoe leather and they just went crazy a little more slowly and he writes very movingly about the cabazon -- catatonic state of the prisoners but the rest of the time people said because he was the upstart middle-class guy he he os puts americans down. he came over here thinking he was the political liberal

and said democracy is disgusting so it is remarkable that in tokyo said with a background and experience was brought up the other way to see the point* of it and it will not be reversed. it was more open than his virtues i agree 19th century french critics said tocqueville got married to democracy not out of fashion agrees sen sort of like the arranged marriage but it made it a stronger. the best book is called tocqueville between two worlds if that is the theme because he needed it but not really to the future he saw everything from this perspective. >> so the people they talk to where they buy themselves

or somebody orchestrating. >> they got sick to death after while they saw the same thing over and over and when they got to new york and what they had not expected because americans were uneasy of their prestige but it is sure they got to boston nobody knew if there were for the first several days they were completely ignored and then they got to some milan with all of the best mansions but it really was who you might run into. hold timeout to west seeing what might be interesting. >>

[inaudible] >> i honestly don't know. we have changed in a lot of ways but i am afraid we have realized some of the prophecies it is a huge bureaucratic system which there it is. not the model of the pioneer farmer. i could not say. >> but in findings the recollection of america and if you found a variety. >> americans but there briefly because they were always on the move but there is then indictable book to

figure out of over 200 names that i mentioned in the diaries and letters and sometimes the connection is and viable but others for example, they stay representitive named spencer who understood the american legal system profoundly and wrote a book about it and a lot of material came from spencer and win it was published in english translation he provided the preface. and further examples like that i think it is more interesting to see then a

stagecoach and alabama teaching about southern culture. >> is there is much separation in political parties? >> i am not a historian but i tried to breed a lot of history but i notice there is a burr role during transition because they had collapsed and were reforming and democrats with jackson were just beginning to create a true party machine under the guidance of van buren. tokyo did not even understand how all-powerful and charismatic jackson was but was biased but all of the aristocrats he meant to first but actually met jackson and 20 minutes indy white house and he did not know his reputation was at

stake. [laughter] so what he saw was this will third try to happen to win a meaningless battle in new orleans it was already over some homemade president and could not see what jackson symbolized how powerful he was. did it just seemed weird and curvature a so 10 years later would have seen a fully developed parties from around that time nobody knew what was going on. we all have access to grind and not giving him a clear picture. >> yes. until now never fully translated into english

there is one version that has had almost everything translated him ample mind would send home letters they expected the families to keep did you see any interesting shift in the understanding. >> i think so. when we came upon the adm from the marginal notes collected he said "this is it" the key to all of my thoughts. not even from the beginning of the trip to the end of fortunately next year there will be a massive transportation coming out from the university of virginia press and every single word they wrote about

america will be available in a book does that affect your decision making your in a legacy you see from the french democracy? >> that was a tragedy of his life because of book was an enormous success and almost elected two the academy the top 40 o intellectual life everybody honor the power of the book but france was still evolving they never have the influence he wanted but we sourced of the outsider he did get into the government very briefly after of the 1848 revolution with the foreign minister but then turned into a dictatorship and had a constitutional convention

former president and it ended up also writes tvx labarbera three said finally when he became president outlast went public after trying everything else. [laughter] >> i just wonder for someone like myself who was not good enough to read it in the original french can you rank order the top two or three translations in english if you have suggestions among them? islamic there are some but only real excellent is thy gold hammer he is a professional translator i have the deepest admiration

but also with the library of america cancellation is a beautiful piece of work. >> i was just wondering but with the interpretation of america and how does that influence in the way to construct your book and it shows the picture of his interpretation? >> that is a very good question it has been an advantage to made to be a total outsider i am trained in literature in british

literature even to work on thoreau had a moving place where i had no standing experience gross certainly and i am not a historian of 19th century america so was allowed me to be more open to new different possible justifications for anybody who has a stake in the professions who historians with a lot of different views and different interpretations for democracy in america and i feel that i was building up a picture in people's lives more than looking for my version of america. one example, one reviewer distinguished historian said i have a better take on new two checks and then many historians america because it had a line i jackson i

just read a very good book about him and tried to understand this complicated and extraordinary person. how could i not bring my own assumptions? but i was hoping to process a lot of other people's. [applause] >> a new worldwide committee gathering called one book and one twitter and the organizer is here. explain what that is. >> in a sense it is a global

book club but the inspiration was not book club which twister has a few of the bandits this wonderful but what we have seen the first one being nancy pearl would if everyone is seattle read the same book were in 1998 the one that inspired me that i was reading about one book, no one chicago the first of the inaugural case "to kill a mockingbird" for the connection that drew and i read that in the course of social capital so the idea is the programs that while they get people to read, they build social capital and connections people with nothing in common something in common.

>> host: what book was chosen to re-read? >> guest: a long and involved the nominating process boltzmann lee it two was american the gods. >> host: why did you choose that? >> guest: i didn't. it was the crowd. that is a good question why a the crowd shows it. there were classics of there. are launched this online at add to wired.com. i am a contributing editor and the books nominated and collected the most votes in the first phase we have a lot of science fiction, a brave new world, a fahrenheit for her to 51 was the runner-up but their clothes a lot of fans that read wired to but with the six popular ones then had

diversity by a broad group of people decided they wanted meals a book. anything anybody read and high school or college they did not want to read for this project. they wanted to read something new. >> host: has people already began reading american god? >> guest: good heavens yes. we have a lot of traffic released as successful as i could have wished but maybe more and as i keep saying it is one big experiment. no one to my knowledge tried to conduct a global book club of four there is no dip in activity overnight because that is for all the people from india to

poland's are reading the book and on twitter about it. there is one hash tag and general comments about the book are being made and we split the subsequent discussions into chapters ofplo. >> host: if people want to join the discussion now? >> log on to twitter and look at the hash mark 1b1t 2010 and from that account we dispense all of the information people the to know. >> host: how long will this go one? >> guest: another eight weeks. >> host: thank you for joining us on booktv. >> guest: thank you.

>> is my a pleasure to introduce shane harris and his book is the publication day. this is the launch at the international spy museum appropriately enough. a fine place to do it. one comment as we go into this, shane harris has written a very powerful book. i think we have all read privacy versus the rights in these are issues that happen with us the securely since 9/11 was the whole issue of surveillance folks abroad are concerned the right enemies within. that concern is still there

and even today we read with the latest hacking scandal that organized groups like criminals are gaining the same capability to do this as a state that has had in the past. we're dealing with extraordinary threats. one of the things that struck me about this book was he the he focuses on five people who have been part of creating what he calls 31st year as the surveillance state. these are the watchers. . .