The Old Regime and the Revolution, written by the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville in 1856, is now a bestseller in China, a phenomenon that can be explained in three ways.

First, the book published during the reign of Napoleon III is a masterpiece.

Second, if The Old Regime and the Revolution is one of the greatest analyses of a key historical event, the French Revolution, it also contains timeless wisdom. While a lot of literature pretends to anticipate the future state of the world, De Tocqueville's lucidity is sobering: "Philosophers and statesmen may learn a valuable lesson of modesty from the history of our revolution, for there never were events greater, better prepared, longer matured, and yet so little foreseen."