Welcome to the American Story. We are grateful to all of you for tuning in each

week and sharing these stories with family, friends, and neighbors, and we're

grateful for your generous support.

Thanks to you at year's end, we will have 129 evergreen episodes,

a collection of stories about the things that make America the country we know and love.

We will release our final episode on America, the country we know, and love.

We will release our final episode on December 28.

I hope each story contains some beautiful truth about our country that is worth hearing again

and again. This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one Democracy in America.

In January 1835, the first volume of a book named Democracy in America was published in Paris.

It was a great critical and commercial success.

It went through seven printings in the next few years

and was quickly translated into German and English.

French critics, who were notoriously hard toqueville, became a celebrity.

He was awarded cherished honors and prizes, invited to the most exclusive salons, and elected

to the prestigious Academy Francaise.

And his book has stood the test of time.

Almost 200 years later, it is still regarded by many learned

and able judges to be the best book ever written about democracy and about America.

Alexis Tocco was born in Paris on July 29, 1805, to an aristocratic family.

Many of his relatives had been sent to the guillotine by the reign of terror following the French Revolution

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