Alexis de Tocqueville’s Journey to America is the backstage to "Democracy in America", the French political thinker’s most famous work, in which the mechanisms of modern democracies are explored. The journey probably stems from his disappointment at the change of regime in France in 1830, when the Bourbons were succeeded by the Orléans. From an aristocratic background but a man of liberal sentiment, the young magistrate decided to leave for the United States to study the prison system. Arriving in New York on 11 May 1831, he travelled with his friend Gustave de Beaumont on an itinerary that was to take him to the main American cities (Boston, Philadelphia, the towns of the south, New Orleans and Washington), but also through virgin forests, deserts and into the wilderness. The journey is marked by endless encounters – it might even be said that Tocqueville invents investigative journalism along his travels – that he draws on to understand the workings of democracy, of a society of equals. His interest focuses on forms of integration, religion and the phenomenon of slavery. In these travel notes, Tocqueville also shows himself to be a great writer, attentive to capturing the details of a social organism through the lives of individuals. When he left for Europe on 20 February 1832, he had understood that the future of mankind would be determined in the New World.

This edition respects the organisation of the texts and the annotations by Umberto Coldagelli, Italy’s foremost expert on the French thinker, and is enriched by a photo essay by Ramak Fazel on the Capitol Buildings, the parliaments of all fifty states of the Union.