I’m about 700 pages in to Democracy in America, and I keep thinking about how bored I would have been by this book had I been forced to read it in high school. Actually it’s the best.
Here’s a quote from a chapter called “ON THE GRAVITY OF AMERICANS AND WHY IT DOES NOT PREVENT THEM FROM ACTING RASHLY”: “An American, instead of dancing joyously in the public square in his hours of leisure as many people of similar occupation still do throughout much of Europe, may retire to his private sanctum to drink alone. Such a man will savor two pleasures at once: while thinking about business he can become decently inebriated in familial seclusion. I used to think that the English were the most serious-minded people on earth, but now that I have seen the Americans, I have changed my mind.”
