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Bezig met laden... Alexis de Tocqueville : a life (2006)door Hugh Brogan
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. A great biography of the famed French author and politician, renowned for his observations of America and his native France. Brogan writes in a lively fashion, with plenty of great quotes and witty asides, many applicable two centuries later. Since Brogan's writing about a famous author, significant portions of this book are devoted to analyzing Tocqueville's writings, so readers who are familiar with Democracy In America or L'Ancien Régime will perhaps get more out of this, but even those who aren't but have an interest in this period of history will enjoy this. Hugh Brogan's masterful new biography Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (Yale University Press, 2007) earned many plaudits across the Pond last year, and after completing my read of it I can only conclude that they were justified indeed. Brogan's research was exhaustive, and his richly detailed account of Tocqueville's life, works and thoughts proves it. Many of us in America know Tocqueville - if at all - as the chronicler of 'our' culture in Democracy in America. But that book, researched when the author was just 26 and written just a few years thereafter, formed only a small portion of Tocqueville's intellectual life (though I suspect the observations he made in America stuck with him for the duration). Tocqueville's life in France, during one of the most turbulent and unsettled periods in that nation's long history, must of necessity claim pride of place in any complete biography (of course whole books have been written just about Tocqueville's trip to America). I learned much from Brogan about AT's role in the various French governments up to the establishment of the Second Empire, and even more about the troubled family dynamics and near-constant health problems which clearly had a tremendous impact on the man's works throughout his career (the ultimate chapters covering his final illness and death, it must be said, are grippingly vivid). Here was a man who truly didn't know what place he was to hold in a society which seemed to be changing around him with shocking frequency - it's a great wonder that he ever got any work done at all. Brogan's book is a hefty volume, and its 644 pages of narrative are densely packed (the notes are excellent too, but then I'm a sucker for those). This is not a book to read over a weekend (even a long weekend), but one which I enjoyed in short bursts of about one chapter at a time. If you read it, take your time with it as well; like Tocqueville's own writings, I think this book rewards the careful reader. It's no breezy biography - it's more, and it's better for being so. http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2007/05/book-review-alexis-de-tocqueville.html geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the greatest political thinkers of all time. Born a French aristocrat, he lost nearly his entire family in the Reign of Terror, and spent most of his adult life struggling for liberty under the unsuccessful regimes of nineteenth-century France. He was a man of apparent contradictions: an aristocrat who believed in democracy, a conservative with liberal ideals, an agnostic with Christian faith in humanity. At age 25 he traveled to America and encountered democracy for the first time. This firsthand experience contributed to his incisive writing on liberty and democracy. His book The Ancien Régime launched the scholarly study of the French Revolution, and Democracy in America remains the best book ever written by a European about the United States. In the first full-length biography in English, historian Brogan puts the man and his ideas together for a fuller understanding of how his influential interpretations came into being.--From publisher description. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)944.0072History and Geography Europe France and region FranceLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. Yale University Press2 edities van dit boek werden gepubliceerd door Yale University Press. Edities: 0300108036, 0300136250 |
The book was, at times, hard to follow...it was hard to keep track of who was who. Often, the book read more like a history and M. de Tocqueville wasn't a robust enough frame on which to hang a history of France. At other times, it read like a biography, but the author then introduced names and events assumed to be known to the reader, which wasn't necessarily the case.
And it ended with references to a Moliere play I've never read (I've read others). What a disappointment after 644 pages! It would have been better to end with some analysis of why M. de Tocqueville and his writing remain important today. There's a reason why I studied his writing in 1982 at university on the Canadian Prairies. That kind of conclusion would have been much more satisfying.
So, a mixed bag for me. Best to know some French history before reading this one. ( )