Translated from Portuguese by mean...

Translated from Portuguese by means of Margaret Jull Costa. NY: Harcourt, 2002 320 pp $25

Toward the extreme point of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, worrying about a strange and peculiarly modern form of tyranny, imagines an "immense and tutelary power" whose conduct is "absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild." Those controled by such a power, made wholly hanging upon an authoritarian state cloaked in the guise of benevolence, are coddl and pacified like children. little rewards assure their obedience. "What remains," he asks, "but to spare