Practice Management

The Great American Tocqueville Novel.

By Dan Hull

Two years ago, we applauded Alexis de Tocqueville for that young Frenchman's uncanny prediction in his Democracy in America of a U.S. president exactly like George W. Bush. We had argued that "W", warts and all, and whether you like him or not, is indeed the "new man" Tocqueville kept seeing during his nine months here in 1831. And that no American should have been too surprised to wake up in 2000 and learn that such a creature got the top job.

Tocqueville, of course, has been getting high marks for prescience from Americans and Europeans in the last 25 years after being ignored for the first 150 years. Now it's time for a new addition to the "Tocqueville renaissance": a novel--and necessarily a "road" novel at that. See in this week's The Economist the review of Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America (Knopf). We'll buy and read this one.

Full post as published by What About Clients? on February 03, 2010 (boomark / email).