Return to Tocqueville in order to understand the comparative history of American and French libraries in the 19th century

Why was the public library concept invented in the young American democracy in the middle of the 19th century? Why did this idea have so much difficulty in coming to fruition in France? In order to understand the different conception of libraries held by the two countries, it is helpful to draw here on the famous work De la démocratie en Amérique by Alexis de Tocqueville, written in 1835. If the political analyses of Tocqueville have been the subject of numerous commentaries, we have not been sufficiently inspired by his comments on the place of culture, and, oddly, of the book, in the construction of a society which makes the equality of everyone its fundamental ethos, but which at the same time fears the perverse effects of a potentially destructive individualism.
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