What They Saw In America: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G.K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb

By James L. Nolan, Jr., Professor of Sociology. This book compares the insights of Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton and Sayyid Qutb, who all traveled to the United States between 1830 and 1950. Nolan uses these writers’ perspectives to highlight aspects of American culture that have persisted over time—individualism and conformism, the unique relationship between religion and capitalism, indifference toward nature, voluntarism, attitudes toward race and imperialistic tendencies.