Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville (French: [aleksi SaRl aRi kleRel d@ tokvil]; 29 July 1805 - 16 April 1859) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both of these, he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals, as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States, and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science. Tocqueville was active in French politics, first under the July Monarchy (1830-1848) and then during the Second Republic (1849-1851) which succeeded the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup, and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution. He argued that the importance of the French Revolution was to continue the process of modernizing and centralizing the French state which had begun under King Louis XIV. The failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals. Tocqueville was a classical liberal who advocated parliamentary government, but was skeptical of the extremes of democracy.
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QUESTION: What was Democracy in America?

Here the omnibus came up, and I rode back to Manchester. The whole conversation took up very little more time than it will take to read it; but I thought it worth recording, as characteristic of the people now suffering in Lancashire from no fault of their own. I know the people well. The greatest number of them would starve themselves to that degree that they would not be of much more physical use in this world, before they would condescend to beg. But starving to death is hard work. What will winter bring to them when severe weather begins to tell upon constitutions lowered in tone by a starvation diet--a diet so different to what they have been used to when in work? What will the 1s. 6d. a-head weekly do for them in that hard time? If something more than this is not done for them, when more food, clothing, and fire are necessary to everybody, calamities may arise which will cost England a hundred times more than a sufficient relief--a relief worthy of those who are suffering, and of the nation they belong to--would have cost. In the meantime the cold wings of winter already begin to overshadow the land; and every day lost involves the lives, or the future usefulness, of thousands of our best population.
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QUESTION: Why were the people of Lancashire suffering?

The mighty fane, with its three massive towers, rises majestically over the red roofs of the town. Its most striking feature is the great Norman screen, running up without buttresses or projections to the parapet and hiding the bases of the square, richly decorated towers of the west front. The plain centre of the screen is the work of Remigius, the first bishop. The rest of it is relieved with rich arcading of Late Norman and Early English periods. The wooden spires which crowned the towers were removed in 1807. In 1192 Hugh of Avalon determined to rebuild the Norman building of Remigius, which an earthquake had shaken. To him we owe the choir and eastern transept. His successors completed the western transept and began the west end of the nave. So much money had to be spent in rebuilding the central tower, which fell in 1239, that the canons could not rebuild the nave entirely, but had to incorporate the Norman end by Remigius. Unfortunately the axis of the west front does not correspond to that of the nave, which is too wide for its height. The low vaulting is a serious defect in the choir built by St. Hugh, but of the superb beauty of the Angel Choir, which encloses his shrine, there can be no doubt. In its richness of sculpture it is one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture in England. The interior of the cathedral is remarkable for the harmony of its style, which is Lancet-Gothic, and the dim lighting of the nave only adds to its impressiveness.
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QUESTION: What object is contained within the fane and what is significant about the design of its center?

When American 11 struck the World Trade Center at 8:46, no one in the White House or traveling with the President knew that it had been hijacked. While that information circulated within the FAA, we found no evidence that the hijacking was reported to any other agency in Washington before 8:46. Most federal agencies learned about the crash in New York from CNN. Within the FAA, the administrator, Jane Garvey, and her acting deputy, Monte Belger, had not been told of a confirmed hijacking before they learned from television that a plane had crashed. Others in the agency were aware of it, as we explained earlier in this chapter. Inside the National Military Command Center, the deputy director of operations and his assistant began notifying senior Pentagon officials of the incident. At about 9:00, the senior NMCC operations officer reached out to the FAA operations center for information. Although the NMCC was advised of the hijacking of American 11, the scrambling of jets was not discussed. In Sarasota, Florida, the presidential motorcade was arriving at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School, where President Bush was to read to a class and talk about education. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told us he was standing with the President outside the classroom when Senior Advisor to the President Karl Rove first informed them that a small, twin-engine plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The President's reaction was that the incident must have been caused by pilot error. At 8:55, before entering the classroom, the President spoke to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who was at the White House. She recalled first telling the President it was a twin-engine aircraft-and then a commercial aircraft-that had struck the World Trade Center, adding "that's all we know right now, Mr. President." At the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney had just sat down for a meeting when his assistant told him to turn on his television because a plane had struck the NorthTower of the World Trade Center. The Vice President was wondering "How the hell could a plane hit the World Trade Center" when he saw the second aircraft strike the South Tower. Elsewhere in the White House, a series of 9:00 meetings was about to begin. In the absence of information that the crash was anything other than an accident, the White House staff monitored the news as they went ahead with their regular schedules.
What question would one ask from this paragraph?

QUESTION:
Who wondered "How the hell could a plane hit the World Trade Center"?