Of all the books written about the American experiment, none has proved more enduring and few have spoken more eloquently than Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Originally published in two volumes, this classic study of the American system seems as relevant today as it did when it first appeared in the mid-19th-century. Now, a new one-volume edition of this classic study is available in the Harper & Row Perennial Library series, with a translation of the French nobleman's work by George Lawrence, and editing by J. P. Mayer, a distinguished Tocqueville scholar [$14.95]. Perennial Library has also republished Sydney Blumenthal's The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power, about which Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. commented, "We have long needed an anatomy of Reaganism as an intellectual movement, and at last Sidney Blumenthal has filled the gap in this incisive, illuminating and enlivening work" [$9.95]. A third Perennial Library reprint, also involving American politics, is David Caute's The Year of the Barricades: A journey Through 1968, an account of the individuals and incidents that marked one of this nation's most tumultuous years [$10.95], Two other recent additions to the Perennial Library series are John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, a commemorative edition of the president's famous book, with a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy [$4.95]; and The U.S. Army War College Guide to the Battle of Antietam, edited by Jay Luvaas and Harold W. Nelson, an informative account of one of the Civil War's bloodiest battles [$8.95]. Pantheon has a paper edition of Watching Television, edited by Todd Gitlin, and containing essays on such aspects of TV as the news, the soaps, the ads, and MTV [$9.95]. Virginia has republished in paper Edward Abrahams' The Lyrical Left: Randolph Bourne, Alfred Stieglitz, and the Origins of Cultural Radicalism in America, an analysis of two individuals who had a profound influence on the Bohemian movement in this country at the turn of the century [$8.95]. Algonquin Books is offering a paperback edition of Katie Letcher Lyle's Scalded to Death by the Steam, an account of stories about railroad disasters and the ballads that were written about them, including the famous "Wreck of the Old 97" [$9.95]. Harvard has reprinted Derek Bok's Higher Learning [$15.00 cloth, $8.95 paper]. A recent entry in Nebraska's Bison Book series is Bayard Taylor's Eldorado or Adventures in the Path of Empire, a Forty-niner's account of his adventures in California during the historic year of 1849, with an introduction by Robert Glass Cleland [$27.95 cloth, $9.95 paper].