ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the outlooks, desires, satisfactions, and sorrows of the American people. It describes a brief intellectual history of the 1970's. One of the most widely read and discussed accounts of American Society produced in the 1970’s were Charles Reich's The Greening of America. Intellectual interest in the Reichian theses was sufficiently widespread to spawn a secondary publication, a collection of critical reactions and commentary edited by Philip Nobile and published under the title The Con III Controversy. An alternate and wholly different line of intellectual analysis on who the American people are and how they are changing appeared almost simultaneously with The Greening of America. The postindustrial society brings a massive transformation of the labour force and the nature of work. The key problem of post-industrial society is not material scarcity but the scarcity of opportunities for self-expression and self-enrichment.
