Tocqueville (Past Masters)
'Larry Siedentop provides a good short biography and summing-up of his subject's thought.' David Holloway, Sunday Telegraph'It deserves to succeed. It has many excellences, of which perhaps the freshest and most valuable is its presentation of Tocqueville's immediate intellectual ancestry. It achieves absolute lucidity and a driving intellectual force because it is composed with a ruthless selectivity worthy of Tocqueville himself. Larry Siedentop is to be congratulated for this admirable miniature portrait.' Times Literary Supplement'Particularly valuable and original is Siedentop's exploration of the way in which Tocqueville's thought grew out of what he calls the "Great Debate" in Restoration France.' Max Beloff, The Times'an excellent introduction to the life and thought of one of the intellectual giants of the nineteenth century ... The book will be read with profit by teachers and students of eighteenth and nineteenth century France. More pertinently, it provides students of the nineteenth century United States with a crisp, clear and concise introduction to Democracy in America and to the ideas which informed it.' Frank Lennon, Liverpool Institute of Higher Education, American Studies Today'It has many excellences,  It achieves absolute lucidity and a driving intellectual force because it is composed with a ruthless selectivity worthy of Tocqueville himself. Siedentop's readers will find their political beliefs, whatever they are, rewardingly challenged; at the very least the book will provoke them into thought; and for Tocquevilleans it has the further merit of sending us back to the great works themselves.  Larry Siedentop is to be congratulated for this admirable minature portrait.' Hugh Brogan.  TLS May '94'... a readable, lucid and masterly introduction to an influential and intriguing writer ... This is a useful and interesting book.' Contemporary Review  Oct '94'a beautifully concise book' Daily Telegraph`a very readable and concise addition to this invaluable series ...  Besides creating a very engaging portrait of Tocqueville as a person, Siedentop provides much more than a bald summary of his thought ... By helping to bring Tocqueville the readers he deserves, Siedentop will have provided students with some invaluable guidance for contemporary debates' Political Studies'a beautifully concise book ... Dr Siedentop rightly devotes space to Tocqueville's strong opposition to centralisation, even in the form of paternalist democracy.' George Walden, Daily Telegraph