The New Yorker issue of September 26, 1970 contained a 70-page, 39,000-word excerpt from The Greening of America -- the longest book excerpt in its history.

A few weeks later, The Greening of America was the #1 nonfiction bestseller, dominating the New York Times list for 36 weeks. In hardcover and paperback, Charles Reich's book eventually sold 2 million copies. For the last two decades, The Greening of America has been out of print. This seemed crazy to me. I vividly remember reading this book, sometimes marking half the lines on a page. And I remember reaching the end and being stunned by its hopeful conclusion:

We have all known the loneliness, the emptiness, the plastic isolation of contemporary America. Our forebears came thousands of miles for the promise of a better life. Now there is a new promise. Shall we not seize it? Shall we not be pioneers once more, since luck and fortune have given us a vision of hope?

 

The extraordinary thing about this new consciousness is that it has emerged out of the wasteland of the Corporate State, like flowers pushing up through the concrete pavement. Whatever it touches it beautifies and renews, and every barrier falls before it.

 

We have been dulled and blinded to the injustice and ugliness of slums, but the new consciousness sees them as just that -- injustice and ugliness --as if they had been there to see all along. We have all been persuaded that giant organizations are necessary, but it sees that they are absurd, as if the absurdity had always been obvious and apparent. We have all been induced to give up our dreams of adventure and romance in favor of the escalator of success, but it says that the escalator is a sham and the dream is real.

 

And these things, buried, hidden, and disowned in so many of us, are shouted out loud, believed in, affirmed by a growing multitude of young people who seem too healthy, intelligent and alive to be wholly insane, who appear, in their collective strength, capable of making it happen. For one almost convinced that it was necessary to accept ugliness and evil, that it was necessary to be a miser of dreams, it is an invitation to cry or laugh. For one who thought the world was irretrievably encased in metal and plastic and sterile stone, it seems a veritable greening of America.

 

That prediction of a glorious future -- almost none of it came true. Instead, as Charles Reich recently noted, "For the last 40 years, I have watched the un-greening of America." So have I. So have other veterans of the '60s and '70s. But the outcome isn't the point -- the message of radiant optimism is. Clearly, I'd like to feel that optimistic again.

So I became Charles Reich's partner; together, we created an abridged, updated e-book edition of his mega-bestseller for Head Butler Books. Abridged? Yes. I edited the text, compressing the original 125,000 words to an Internet-friendly 24,000 words and eliminating most of the sections on "Consciousness III." Updated? Charles Reich wrote a new preface and final chapter.

 

The e-book of The Greening of America is available in Kindle and Nook editions at the 1970s price of $3.99. Both Kindle and Nook editions can be read on dedicated Kindle and Nook devices, iPads, computers (Mac or PC) and Androids. [To sample or buy the Kindle edition from Amazon, click here. To sample or buy the Nook edition from Barnes & Noble, click here.]

 

Why is The Greening of America important now?

 

For the same reasons it mattered to so many readers in 1970.

 

Start with the genius of Charles Reich. He graduated in 1952 from Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. In 1953, he was a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black. He became an associate professor of law at Yale in 1960, and, from 1964 to 1974, was a professor of law. Among his students: Hillary and Bill Clinton, Robert Reich.

 

The first reason to read The Greening of America -- the title predates the environmental movement now known as Green -- is because it presents a brilliant and original take on the United States. In these pages, Reich described American history not as a progression of events but as a series of shifts in consciousness. He showed how the values of village life that guided the birth of this country ("Consciousness I") gave way to a Corporate State that brings no joy to everyone who serves it ("Consciousness II").

 

The other reason to read The Greening of America is for its brilliant and original suggestion of a way out: the radical, idealistic "Consciousness III." For Reich, political change comes last. The way he sees social and political change, you start with the individual, with yourself. First change the way you think, help others do the same, then the culture changes -- and, finally, the system changes.

 

Last year, we saw the emergence of the "Occupy" movement, and, with it, ideas that would be instantly familiar to anyone who had read The Greening of America.

 

Now we are in the middle of a Presidential election, with a campaign that sounds a lot like a debate between a "Consciousness II" Administration (which argues that the federal government can best protect us from an unregulated marketplace and a shredded safety net) and "Consciousness I" Republican candidates (who tell us that the solution to all our problems is a return to a time when men took care of their own business and government barely existed).

 

In short: "The Greening of America" is reappearing at a time when it can contribute to -- and shape -- the national conversation.

 

The Greening of America asks questions and proposes solutions that aren't much discussed in our public forums. Charles Reich and I hope this edition will encourage that conversation, and that its readers will help forge a path to a brighter, kinder future. Nothing would please us more than to hear from those of you who will read this new edition and have questions or comments or just want to talk about it.

[Cross-posted from HeadButler.com]