Award-winning author Leo Damrosch discusses his new biography, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America.

Alexis de Tocqueville helped define a fledgling nation by writing about his nine-month tour of America in the 1830s in his two-volume book Democracy in America. Drawing on documents and letters that have never before appeared in English, Damrosch sheds new light on how Tocqueville’s travels influenced his commentary on America.

Damrosch is a professor of literature at Harvard University.