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...learned, and thorough. It may even be the best biography of Tocqueville yet written. But it is not, for all that, great work of history, nor the book its subject deserves. Why?
The answer has to do with the difference between a great historian, such as Tocqueville himself, and one who is merely good. Hugh Brogan, a former journalist for the Economist and author of the Penguin History of the United States, is clearly a good historian: he has a mind of broad sympathy, he is no ideologue or fanatic, and his writing is infected with only the occasional cliche. But if he is saved from making the common mistakes by a very English brand of reason and good sense, Brogan has not the subtlety to follow the steps of a master like Tocqueville to the end. Take, for instance, his account of Democracy in America:
[Tocqueville's] overall picture of American democracy is warmly enthusiastic as well as penetratingly intelligent; in view of what he says about the American jury, American religion, American lawyers, American education, American local government and political parties, among other things, it is impossible (I would have supposed) to fancy that he really thought such a mature free people, with centuries of experience behind it (as he loved to emphasise) was in danger of tyranny of any kind...
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