The Tocqueville Reader includes not only Tocqueville's major writing but also travel letters, conversations with ministers and politicians, and diary entries not originally intended for the public. It includes twenty-nine pieces never before translated into English, and a wide-ranging editorial introduction that gives an account of Tocqueville's life as a politician and inspirations as a writer.

Alan S. Kahan is Associate Professor of History at Florida International University. He is the author of Aristocratic Liberalism, The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville (1992, 2001), and the translator of Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the Revolution (vol. 1: 1998, vol. 2: 2001).