Reading can offer a way through this tension. We have selected 10 books about anti-consumerism that show that challenging the status quo may not be a fool’s errand after all.

Published right at the turn of the century in December 1999, Naomi Klein’s No Logo is a modern classic of anti-consumerism, anti-globalization, and anti-corporate activism.

Read this book to see how Klein eloquently outlines just how big brands (like Nike and McDonald’s) go far beyond making and selling products and end up shaping politics and culture.

No Logo is part exposé and part activist handbook, all of which is neatly outlined over the course of four sections: “No Space”, “No Choice”, “No Jobs”, and “No Logo.”

In this 2001 anti-consumerist book, film producer John de Graaf, environmental scientist David Wann, and economist Thomas H. Naylor joined forces to tackle the social epidemic that they believed, over 20 years ago, would eventually ravage the US and the world as a whole.

The book describes affluenza as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” Sound familiar?

Although the term may sound scathing, the book never seeks to reprimand or belittle its readers who have bought into the never-ending consumerist dream of chasing more comfort and enjoyment from overconsumption. After identifying affluenza’s symptoms and origins, the authors helpfully go a step further to prescribe practical advice for recovery.

Raw, funny, and ultimately very real, “7” is not really a guide per se – it is more of a memoir of how the author Jen Hatmaker and her family decided to tackle how overconsumption had been ruling their lives.

Jen and her family took seven months, pinpointed seven areas of excess in their lives (food, clothes, possessions, media and technology, spending, waste, and stress), and then made seven simple choices.

Readers get to experience the day-to-day anecdotal experiences that Jen and her family had during this time. The main takeaway is “yes, you can do this too.”

Rather than simply showing the issues with consumerism and overconsumption from a human angle, Hickel takes it a step further to showcase the big picture that we often overlook.

“Less Is More” showcases how shifting our perception of nature from one of extraction and domination to one of regeneration and reciprocity could make all the difference.

The living world as a whole is incompatible with the endless economic growth that capitalism demands – it is unsustainable, and so Hickel posits that “degrowth” is the only logical way forward. The book concludes that this can be achieved through the deliberate reduction of consumption and the eventual transition to a post-capitalist economy.

Like many books in this space, it begins with a deceptively simple question: “What would really happen if we just stopped shopping?”

However, while most of his peers would treat this as a thought experiment, MacKinnon actually goes out into the world to investigate his question and the impacts that it might have. From the ubiquitous big box stores in America to extremely sustainable communities in Ecuador, MacKinnon’s quest took him on a world tour.

Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened, and MacKinnon got to see his ideas being tested on a global scale.

Some environmental fiction novels fall into the trap of being too “preachy” and alienating readers. Richard Powers manages to avoid this in The Overstory and simply tells a very human narrative about trees.

Throughout his novel, nine very different people find their lives overlapping and becoming intertwined due to their own personal connections and life experiences with trees.

In the end, The Overstory never claims to have all of the answers – it simply establishes that environmental activism and humanity are two sides of the same coin.

In this novel from way back in 2003, Max Barry thrusts us into a seemingly absurd world, a dark comedy where corporate greed runs unchecked in a dystopian future (are we there yet?).

In this future that Barry creates for us, people are required to take the names of the organizations that employ them as their own surnames… and well, if you’ve got two jobs, then you’d better get used to being called Mr. Nike-McDonald’s.

The titular character, Jennifer, is an investigator for the government, hence her name, and the story follows her as she tries to maintain her morality in a world where profit has become the ultimate law.

The Space Merchants starts on the foundation that many dystopian future novels are built upon: capitalism is unchecked, corporations and ad agencies run the world, and scarcity is rampant.

Kornbluth and Pohl then take this foundation and turn the narrative’s sights upwards, towards space. The main character, Mitch Courtenay, gets assigned the ad campaign to sell the idea of colonizing Venus, but with this seemingly lucrative opportunity comes a realm of danger and intrigue that he is not ready to navigate.

The true strength of The Space Merchants is how real and plausible the future it presents feels, as well as how the predatory marketing and unchecked consumerism that it showcases are alive and thriving today.

With her debut novel, Severance, Ling Ma manages to unironically create the perfect blend of post-apocalyptic fiction and anti-consumerism commentary.

Severance gives us the tongue-in-cheek concept of “workplace zombies” that we’re all familiar with. But in this case, they’re actually real zombies, and it’s all caused by a fictional fungal infection. The infection turns its hosts into mindless husks that repeat their usual routines until they inevitably collapse.

Ling Ma doesn’t romanticize the apocalypse or show it as a survivalist’s wet dream – she holds it up as a mirror to the world that we are living in right now.

What would happen if a man in New York City, one of the most consumerist cities in the world, decides to turn his environmentalist dial from zero to one hundred almost overnight?

Well, this isn’t a theoretical question because Colin Beavan did precisely that. Beavan chronicles his yearlong mission, taking his wife and baby daughter along for the journey, to live a no-impact lifestyle in NYC. The family makes an extensive list of changes to their day-to-day lives, including giving up plastic and disposable packaging, going without air-conditioning, and making their way through the city without the subway or elevators.

The end result is not a proclamation that everyone should go full no-impact. What we simply get is a glimpse into what it is like to manage our environmental impact and showcase some of the changes that we could all feasibly make.

These 10 books offer a diverse look at why our culture’s ever-growing infatuation with consumerism needs to be challenged, and how to actually do it.

So choose the one that speaks to you as your starting point and go from there, whether it is the vivid storytelling of Ling Ma’s “Severance,” the investigative essays of Naomi Klein’s “No Logo,” or the lighthearted personal experiments in Jen Hatmaker’s “7.”

They all arrive at the same general conclusion: we aren’t going to find environmental security and true happiness in our shopping carts.