The Legacy of Alexis de Tocqueville [audio 16min @0:55]

Alexis de Tocqueville was an old-world aristocrat with aspirations as a social scientist. He left revolutionary France and travelled to America in the early nineteenth century. His subsequent volumes, Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution are still considered essential reading for students of American culture and modern democracy today. Laurie Taylor is joined by Hugh Brogan, Research Professor at the Department of History at the University of Essex and author of Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution (Profile Books), and Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, to examine the legacy of one of the greatest political thinkers of all time.