This review summarizes Hugh Brogan's biography of Alexis de Tocqueville. It notes that while Brogan sheds new light on Tocqueville's private life, he may not fully convey why Democracy in America is truly a masterpiece. Specifically: - Brogan uses unpublished works and letters to provide insights into Tocqueville's life, but does not show why Democracy in America's political philosophy and ambitious science of politics are original. - Brogan seems to prefer Tocqueville's Recollections over Democracy in America, though the former was written by a disappointed man near the end of his career. - Some scholars may disagree with Brogan's assessment that the enduring importance

1. Despite their wickedness, one might come away feel-
ing sorry for the delusional philosophes, for they were
not just engaged in a battle against an external enemy
or even their friends, but with their own psyches. The
philosophes Russo cites, especially Voltaire and
Diderot, wrote satires and enjoyed frivolities, saw the
human condition as multistranded, and had to convince
themselves that they must abandon such views in order
to improve and change humanity. In combatting the
goût moderne, therefore, they were denying their very
humanity.
LIANA VARDI
State University of New York at Buffalo
HUGH BROGAN. Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life. New Ha-
ven: Yale University Press. 2007. Pp. 724. $35.00.
In the English-speaking world, the last decades have
seen a remarkable Tocquevillian renaissance. Four new
translations of Democracy in America have been pub-
lished in the past eight years (a fifth one, the translation
of Eduardo Nolla’s critical edition, is on the way), along
with numerous exegeses of Tocqueville’s works. None-
theless, in spite of his current popularity, Tocqueville
remains a notoriously difficult subject for his interpret-
ers and the field of Tocqueville studies is a veritable
labyrinth, full of traps and hazards. Because his com-
plex personality defies our black-and-white categories,
we are often at a loss when trying to characterize his
“true” beliefs. A veteran in this field, Hugh Brogan is
aware of the mines and paradoxes facing any inter-
preter of Tocqueville’s life and works. His new biog-
raphy offers us a timely opportunity to reacquaint our-
selves with Tocqueville’s complex personality.
Informative without being pedantic or overwhelming,
Brogan’s book reads like a novel, weaving aspects of
Tocqueville’s private life into a grand narrative about
the ideas and actions of Tocqueville. The figure that
emerges from these pages is that of a thinker who
brought passion and commitment to whatever he un-
dertook and did not limit himself to merely recording
the past or explaining the present but sought to awaken
his readers and inspired them to fight against all forms
of despotism.
While Brogan uses both published works and corre-
spondence to comment on all of Tocqueville’s major
writings, he seems to have a particular appreciation for
Tocqueville’s Recollections and goes as far as to claim
that “without it, Tocqueville’s oeuvre would be infi-
nitely less fascinating, for only in this book does he take
the stage himself” (p. 488). This is an odd claim given
the fact that after all this book was written by a disap-
pointed and fatigued man at a point in time when his
political career, in which he had invested so much, was
about to end miserably. Because he seems to like the
Recollections so much, and in spite of the occasional
words of praise for Democracy in America, Brogan does
not successfully convey to his readers why the latter is
truly a masterpiece and deserves its classic status. It is
telling that Brogan, who argues that Democracy in
America is “a profoundly political book” (p. 372), does
not seem to be particularly impressed by its more phil-
osophical second volume, which, he claims, is allegedly
“shaped as much by personal neurosis as by logic and
observation” (p. 361). Yet, it is there that the voice of
the political philosopher seeking to understand how
modern democracy changes human condition prevails
over that of the sociological observer obsessed with
faithfully recording mere facts. While Brogan’s book
may not render full justice to the originality of Toc-
queville’s political philosophy and his ambitious new
science of politics, it succeeds in shedding fresh light on
Tocqueville’s private life. His childless marriage to
Mary Motley is a case in point. Tocqueville loved his
wife and took serious risks when marrying her against
the wishes of his aristocratic family. They exchanged
many affectionate letters and enjoyed spending quiet
evenings in front of the fireplace in their chateau in
Normandy, reading to each other from old books. Yet,
at the same time, as Brogan reminds us, Tocqueville
was a man of many passions and was far from being a
model of marital fidelity. Brogan’s account of the last
few years of Tocqueville’s life depicts a weakened man
desperately fighting for his life, at the mercy of incom-
petent doctors who often subjected him to painful and
ultimately ineffective treatments. During all this time,
Tocqueville courageously struggled to complete the
second volume of The Old Regime and the Revolution
and hoped that his health would eventually be restored.
Brogan does not claim to have written the definitive
biography of Tocqueville and he is right to think so.
Much more can be said, for example, about Toc-
queville’s passion for ideas (that must not be con-
founded with a psychological inclination), his views on
religion, and his parliamentary career. Brogan is right
to remind us that Tocqueville’s analysis of modern de-
mocracy was not devoid of serious shortcomings. Com-
menting on Tocqueville’s conception of politics in De-
mocracy in America or his critique of the system of
scrutin de liste in France in 1851, Brogan claims that
Tocqueville never fully understood the fundamental
nature of modern politics, based on elections and po-
litical parties. “At bottom,” he writes, “[Tocqueville]
refused to admit that free, democratic politics is im-
possible without organized parties” (p. 512).
It is therefore surprising to learn that Brogan regards
Tocqueville as one of his “oldest and dearest friends”
(p. 693), because he does not seem to have a particular
affinity for Tocqueville’s aristocratic and theoretical
sensibility or his paradoxical moderation. Some Toc-
quevillian scholars would be inclined to disagree with
Brogan’s claims that the enduring vitality of Toc-
queville’s books lies above all in the fascination of
Tocqueville himself and that the accuracy of his con-
clusions is of limited importance.. It would be difficult
to account for Tocqueville’s current star status if many
of his conclusions about the evolution of democracy
were simply inaccurate or obsolete.
As Tocqueville himself confessed in a letter to Louis
de Kergorlay, his true value lies above all in works of
1254 Reviews of Books
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2008

2. mind, and he is worth more in his thoughts than in his
deeds. This point deserved a much clearer emphasis in
Brogan’s book.
AURELIAN CRAIUTU
Indiana University,
Bloomington
MUNRO PRICE. The Perilous Crown: France between Rev-
olutions, 1814–1848. London: Macmillan. 2007. Pp. xv,
462. £20.00.
Munro Price’s earlier book, The Road from Versailles:
Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the Fall of the French
Monarchy (2002), was distinguished by lively writing
and careful reading of sources. By using primary doc-
uments previously unexplored, Price was able to say
something new and important on the secret diplomacy
of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He has accom-
plished a similar feat with his latest work, but he has not
really written a history of France, as the title might lead
one to believe. Unlike Robert Tomb’s history of France
(to which Price frequently refers), this book says very
little about economic life, intellectual currents, artistic
expression, or social history.
This engaging work is really a dual biography of Lou-
is-Philippe and his sister Adélaı̈de. Based on the un-
derutilized Orléans family papers in the Archives Na-
tionales, as well as papers in private hands that had not
previously been consulted, Price illuminates many as-
pects of Louis-Philippe’s rise to power and his style of
governing. His most important discovery is the impor-
tance of Adélaı̈de, described as “the most powerful
Frenchwoman of the nineteenth century” (p. 6). Ad-
élaı̈de’s bold decisions ensured her brother’s accession
to power in 1830, and during the July Monarchy she
served behind the scenes as a major adviser to Louis-
Philippe. She talked to people with whom he did not
want to negotiate directly or openly and cultivated the
support of prominent politicians in France (often
through their mistresses). Every evening the two sib-
lings met for several hours to discuss affairs. Her cor-
respondence with the French ambassadors in Great
Britain allowed the king to have a channel of commu-
nication that bypassed the ministry of foreign affairs
and buttressed Louis-Philippe’s view of the constitu-
tional monarchy as conferring a special role for the king
in war and diplomacy. Her illness and death in Decem-
ber 1847 left her brother without her essential advice on
difficult decisions that had allowed him to weather so
many storms. The Revolution of 1848 began less than
two months after her death.
One of the strengths of this book is to show how much
the Orléans family and those around it were shaped by
the traumatic events of the French Revolution. Their
father, the famous Philippe Egalité, had perished dur-
ing the French Revolution, and the brother and sister
had spent years in exile. The members of this family,
including Louis-Philippe’s wife and their many chil-
dren, emerge in this work as distinct individuals. The
tragic death of their oldest son in a carriage accident is
movingly told. Adélaı̈de’s devotion to her brother was
total. Louis-Philippe may have been rather vain (he
wore toupées), but he was a skillful politician who gen-
uinely strove to reign as a constitutional monarch. Price
believes that the key to his political philosophy was that
he never tried to sustain in office a ministry that had lost
the confidence of the Chamber. Had Louis-Philippe
been willing to accept reforms in the electoral system
in the late 1840s, he would probably not have fallen
from power. The Revolution of 1848, Price argues, was
far from inevitable. The key to the different outcomes
of reform in France and Great Britain was that in 1832
“in Britain a ministry with a parliamentary majority
supported reform; in France it did not” (p. 322). Louis-
Philippe would not accept François Guizot’s offer to
resign to make way for a reforming ministry because he
believed that would undermine the constitutional sys-
tem. Guizot still enjoyed the support of the majority of
the legislature, and the king refused to bow “to dem-
onstrations with no other authority than the pleasure of
those who participate in them” (p. 323). The fall of Lou-
is-Philippe in 1848 occurred because of blunders, Price
argues. By the 1840s constitutional monarchy was quite
successful and its neglect in the historical literature is
unwarranted.
Although Price has carefully sorted out the rumors
and conflicting interpretations of Louis-Philippe’s ac-
tions, his desire to let the king and his sister “recount
their own experiences in their own words” (p. 7) some-
times results in putting the king’s motives in the most
favorable light. For example, Price’s account of the fall-
ing out of the king and the Marquis de Lafayette places
all of the blame on Lafayette, even suggesting at one
point that Lafayette’s actions were treasonous. Yet,
Price does not refer to Lafayette’s memoirs or give
Lafayette’s interpretation of matters. Price praises
Louis-Philippe’s political skills in dealing with Lafay-
ette and Jacques Laffite, but does not give their views
that the king had treated them with ingratitude after
their support had saved his throne in the face of hostile
demonstrations.
This book provides a rich picture of the complex po-
litical groups and the individuals who made up the royal
government. Price has put politics back at the center of
national life where it surely belongs and highlighted a
period that deserves more attention from historians.
This book is enlightening, readable, and deserves to be
widely read.
SYLVIA NEELY
Pennsylvania State University
MARY DEWHURST LEWIS. The Boundaries of the Repub-
lic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in
France, 1918–1940. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
sity Press. 2007. Pp. xv, 361. Cloth $65.00, paper $24.95.
As anyone who has followed the recent discord over the
new Paris museum of immigration history knows, im-
migration is one of the hottest of hot-button topics,
both intellectually and politically, in France today.
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AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2008