Charles Reich, 91, a college professor known for his popular book The Greening of America, which was on the bestseller lists for weeks and weeks in 1970, has died.
By the time “The Greening of America” was published in 1970, Mr. Reich (the “ch” is pronounced “sh”), a son of privilege and private schools, was already an eminent legal scholar, if something of a heretic. He was best known then for his article “The New Property” (1964), which defended an individual’s right to privacy and autonomy against government prerogative.
That article was cited in 1970 in a landmark United States Supreme Court decision, which broadened the definition of property rights to include licenses, contracts and welfare benefits.
That same year, as the rebellious fervor of the 1960s appeared to be peaking, The New Yorker published a 39,000-word excerpt from “The Greening of America,” giving flower children a powerful intellectual rationale and their worried parents a measure of comfort by casting the younger generation’s values, built on personal happiness instead of material success, as constructive and benign.
He was trained as an attorney.
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Another obit: Alan Brinkley, a noted historian, also died. He was 70 and suffered from a type of dementia.:
Mr. Brinkley’s work spanned the full spectrum of the last century’s seminal events and influential characters, including the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy._____
His “Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression” (1983) won the National Book Award. And his high school and college history textbooks “American History” and “The Unfinished Nation” were best sellers and frequently updated.
“For the 20th century, Alan set the agenda for most political historians, especially about the New Deal,” Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent magazine, said in a telephone interview.
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