THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA
The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher and educational outreach entity, was founded in 1979 with grants from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Although its mission was a well-grounded and no-nonsense business approach to publishing, it essentially was fulfilling a long-held dream by the great critic Edmund Wilson and others. The United States of America, they felt, ought to have a publications series of high standards and high quality of production for its national literature, and it ought to reflect the diversity and traditions of all of its writing.
The first books appeared in 1982, when I first began selling new books in an independent book store here in Carlisle. (The founding of Whistlestop Bookshop was three years away.) I still have my copies of Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. I won’t tell you how many of the 300+ to date I have acquired, but I am happy to say I never regretted one. The books are remarkably beautiful and efficient and scholarly and finely-made. They are sometimes the only respectable edition available (beware of photo-offset print-on-demand editions!). The accompanying chronologies and notes and textual discussions of every volume are a joy and an education. I cannot praise them too highly.
This listing is what I carry in the store. If you would like other volumes, send me an e-mail or call the store. Enjoy browsing, buying, and owning landmark definitive editions of great writers or great American subjects.
The listings are alphabetical by author except for new or recent anthologies at the top. Older anthologies are at the bottom of the page.
All James Baldwin titles and Ursula K. Le Guin titles are on the respective pages of the authors.
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
An exclusive new translation of the most perceptive and influential book ever written about American politics and society—“the bible on democracy” (The Texas Observer)
Alexis de Tocqueville, a young aristocratic French lawyer, came to the United States in 1831 to study its penitentiary systems. His nine-month visit and subsequent reading and reflection resulted in this landmark masterpiece of political observation and analysis.
In Democracy in America, Tocqueville vividly describes the unprecedented social equality he found in America and explores its implications for European society in the emerging modern era. His book provides enduring insight into the political consequences of widespread property ownership, the potential dangers to liberty inherent in majority rule, the vital role of religion in American life, and the importance of civil institutions in an individualistic culture dominated by the pursuit of material self-interest. He also probes the deep differences between the free and slave states, writing prophetically of racism, bigotry, and prejudice in the United States.
Brought to life by Arthur Goldhammer’s clear, fluid, and vigorous translation, this volume of Democracy in America is the first to fully capture Tocqueville’s achievements both as an accomplished literary stylist and as a profound political thinker.
Winner of the 2004 Translation Prize awarded by the French-American Foundation
“This new translation by Goldhammer gets to the heart of Tocqueville’s words.” — Library Journal
“It’s hard to think of a work that has so influenced our understanding of the United States as this—still the most authoritative, reflective set of observations about American institutions and the American character ever written. That its author was a Frenchman, and an aristocrat at that, and that he was balanced and penetrating has often occasioned rueful surprise. However, de Tocqueville’s distance from his subject is precisely what lends his observations such continuing currency. A few decades ago, for instance, we read Tocqueville for his prediction that Russia and the United States would one day contest for pre-eminence. Now, we ought to read him (Iraqis and Afghans should, too) for his classic analyses of the link between political parties and free associations and for his reflections on such matters as religion and public life, and “self-interest properly understood.” But many solid translations exist. Why another? Because the Library of America would be incomplete without this canonical work of history and sociology. And this translation by Goldhammer, the dean of American translators from the French, accomplishes what it’s hard to believe possible: it lends to this unalterably grave work some zest. Never slipping into slang, it gives a colloquial cast, fitting for our time, to a work normally rendered only with high solemnity. The Library of America claims that its editions will stay in print forever. This one’s likely to stand that test.” — Publishers Weekly