Progress and Privilege: A book about environmentalism meets the press

In August 1982, Anchor Press publishedProgress and Privilege, a book by William Tucker. Tucker's thesis was that environmentalism represented the ideas of aristocratic conservatism translated onto a popular scale, and that it had entwined itself with the protection of social and economic privilege. The book was riddled with fundamental errors of fact and of logic, but it also was literate and superficially impressive. It was widely reviewed. An examination of 23 reviews shows this: Most of the reviews in daily newspapers were written by laymen who couldn't analyze Tucker's arguments or recognize his mistakes. Most of the reviews in specialized publications were done by competent analysts who brought some special knowledge to their work. With the latter group of reviewers,Progress and Privilege fared poorly.