"Tocqueville: A Biography is a book of considerable importance, primarily because of its comprehensive treatment of both Tocqueville's public life and his private life--including many details necessarily absent from the two previous biographical essays."--John Lukacs, The New Yorker

In this first major biography of the author of Democracy in America, Andre Jardin traces Alexis de Tocqueville's eventful life from his birth in 1805 to aristocratic parents in post-revolutionary France, through his trip to antebellum America as a young man, his...