Leo Damrosch, the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, discusses of his new book, *Tocqueville’s Discovery of America*, and an exploration of Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous journey through the fledgling nation. Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece, *Democracy in America*, was the product of a young man’s open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. In *Tocqueville’s Discovery of America*, the prizewinning biographer Leo Damrosch retraces Tocqueville’s nine-month journey through the young nation in 1831–1832, illuminating how his enduring ideas were born of imaginative interchange with America and Americans, and painting a vivid picture of Jacksonian America.