"Mr. Reich traced the metamorphosis of American society through three levels of consciousness: Consciousness I, the nation’s early self-reliance; Consciousness II, the conformism of the New Deal era..."

"... and Consciousness III, an unshackling from the stifling moral constraints of the 1950s, focusing on spiritual fulfillment. 'The extraordinary thing about this new consciousness,' he wrote, 'is that it has emerged from the machine-made environment of the corporate state, like flowers pushing up through a concrete pavement.... For those who thought the world was irretrievably encased in metal and plastic and sterile stone, it seems a veritable greening of America.'... 'The Greening of America'... might not have appeared in print if Mr. Reich’s mother, who ran the Horace Mann School for Nursery Years in New York, had not mentioned to a parent at the school that her son’s manuscript was languishing at a publisher. The parent was Lillian Ross, a writer for The New Yorker and paramour of the magazine’s editor, William Shawn. The book became a best seller in 1970 despite mixed notices. Reviewing it in The Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt proclaimed that in Mr. Reich 'youth culture has gotten its very own Norman Vincent Peale,' referring to the author of 'The Power of Positive Thinking.' In Mr. Reich’s utopia, he wrote, 'we’ll just stop consuming what we don’t need, stop doing meaningless work, stop playing war and ego games.'"

From "Charles Reich, Who Saw ‘The Greening of America,’ Dies at 91" (NYT).