Two Centuries After Tocqueville, America Still Surprises Its Visitors

It’s estimated that somewhere between 500 and 1,000 travel diaries — possibly the most popular literary genre of the 19th century — were written by foreign visitors to the United States in our first century of existence.

The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” written after his visit to these shores in the 1830s, ...