http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-Essays-Penguin-Classics-ebook/dp/B002XHNMJY/"Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville was written in the mid-1800s.  De Tocqueville was a Frenchman who visited America and wrote a detailed description of what he saw.  This book is long and full of details that won't interest most people, so just read the chapters that interest you.  The book gives a good overview of what America was like at that time, and it clearly had little in common with America today.