Contents -- Preface -- 1 -- Tocqueville's vision of history -- The ending of "mixed" government -- "Right" and "Left": Their conservative misreadings -- A liberal misreading -- Conservatives and liberals -- Popular sovereignty and socialism -- Popular sovereignty and nationalism -- Nationalism and socialism -- The accumulation of opinions -- Progressive liberalism -- Progressives and populists -- Populist anti-Semitism and Germanophilia -- Nation and state -- 2 -- 1914: The world of yesterday? -- "Modern"? -- The Russian Revolution: A tremendous failure -- 1917 and the Americanization of the world -- The failure of liberalism after 1918 -- 1920-1945: The division of the world -- Misuse and misreading of "Fascism" -- Misuse and misreading of "totalitarianism" -- Misuse and misreading of National Socialism as an "ideology" -- 3 -- The United States in 1945 and thereafter -- The decline of the state -- The declining function of "classes" -- "Tyranny of the majority"? "Public opinion" and its misreadings -- Decline of privacy, rise of publicity -- Publicity and celebrity -- Changes in the recording and knowledge of history -- 4 -- Fear and hatred -- Triumph and disappearance of "liberalism" -- The rise of criminality -- A new, profound, division -- Ideas and beliefs -- Hope, against fear -- Index.