Mitchell's new study uses Tocqueville's Democracy in America to study the condition of democracy in the United States in our own time. First, he addresses tensions in the United States between ideas of equality and the American political system. He then turns to the relationship between this system and American capitalism, and analyzes inclusion and exclusion in American life. Finally, he asks whether Americans have surrendered to what Tocqueville called the materialization of life, and have abandoned their original quest and become radically alienated from politics.