Though intellectuals write endlessly about politics, relatively few enter the fray directly. One exception to this rule was the author of Democracy in America (1835, 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). These texts effectively serve as bookends to Alexis de Tocqueville’s active, albeit unsuccessful, career during the turbulent years of France’s July monarchy, the short-lived Second Republic, and finally the Second Empire established by that most enigmatic of political adventurers, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. Tocqueville served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies for much of King Louis-Philippe’s 18-year reign, a member of the Constituent Assembly charged with drafting…