"A shrewd, on-the-ground account of how political change is made—and unmade—by the author of Democracy in America.... [T]he author is seemingly incapable of writing a dull sentence.... In many ways as relevant as the day it was written and great fun to read."--Kirkus Reviews

"Recollections is unique among Tocqueville’s major writings. In this devastating chronicle of the failures of friends and foes in the Revolution of 1848, he abandons the distance of his more analytical writings to reveal his candid reactions to the ultimate moral and political challenge of his time. We now have the definitive English edition: beautifully presented by Olivier Zunz, punctuated by the satirical sketches of Daumier, and wonderfully translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Capturing the stylistic brilliance of Tocqueville as immediate political portraitist and juge de soi, this new version of the Recollections also reminds us that some firsthand accounts of collective crisis can speak across time and culture. Like the best of political novels, they expand our sense of the possibilities and limitations of our own political world."--Cheryl Welch, Harvard University, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville

"This is the definitive English edition of Tocqueville’s Recollections. It has been splendidly edited and introduced by Olivier Zunz, who has chosen key documents from Tocqueville and others to accompany this greatest of all French political memoirs. And it has been marvelously translated by Tocqueville’s greatest English translator, Arthur Goldhammer. Tocqueville is a difficult writer to render into English. He is subtle, nuanced, ironic, and many earlier generations of French thought and literature breathe through his prose. Goldhammer captures it all, while explaining his approach in a luminous essay on Tocqueville’s style."--David A. Bell, Lapidus Professor, Princeton University, author of Shadows of Revolution: Reflections on France, Past and Present