I had been teaching for one year at the University of Virginia history department in the fall of 1979, when Theodore Caplow, a sociology professor, asked me to serve as an officer of his recently-created Tocqueville Society. Although the society had just published its first issue of the Tocqueville Review, it was distinct from it. In 1992, I joined the newly-formed editorial board which Henri Mendras created upon taking over the editorship.