Uh oh: Tocqueville was only impressed by Americans because… his English wasn’t so hot?

That’s my reluctant takeaway…

Leo Damrosch brings the journey to life, using Tocqueville’s own observations alongside those of his contemporaries, such as Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens, who mocked Americans for their uncouthness.

Tocqueville was more generous: “Much is flawed in the American scene,” he wrote, “but as a whole it grips the imagination.” Damrosch is particularly illuminating when he explains that English visitors were often offended by American colloquial speech.

But Tocqueville was at least partly immune: “a principal reason for [his] apparent lack of snobbery was that his command of English, fluent enough for lively conversation, was not so perfect as to register nuances.”