Grace Blakeley is a rare woman in the male-dominated world of economic thinkers, and at just 30 years old, an Oxford-educated KPMG consultant turned progressive commentator who regularly goes head to head with Piers Morgan on everything from abortion rights to Barbie. A political writer at the democratic-socialist mag Tribune, Blakeley has used her profile to skewer venture capitalism as greedy, corrupt and detrimental to all but the uber-rich. Her impeccably reported book takes aims specifically at the world’s most powerful corporations.  

Hilariously subtitled “Everything I Wish I Never Had to Learn About Money,” the TikTok sensation’s book chronicles her journey from homeless teen to multimillionaire CEO of clothing company, Tunnel Visions. What could be a capitalist’s dream come true, however, is actually a challenge to the system she ultimately hacked by studying capitalism from the inside out. At Tunnel’s helm, she provides everything she needed way back when: from full benefits and free lunch to evenly distributed company profits for all Tunnel employees.

This is not a critique of nor paean to capitalism as much as a survival guide of a system we’re stuck in. New York University professor Scott Galloway (and podcaster extraordinaire, along with Kara Swisher, on the show Pivot) writes a how-to on financial freedom in an age of climbing inflation and job/housing shortages. We are also in a time of unprecedented mobility, innovation, opportunity and creativity, provided you focus your talent (not your passion), embrace stoicism (discipline and temperance) and maximize your time in the market. The beloved too-cool-for-school prof, who founded the marketing firm Prophet, does it all with pop-culture references and personal success stories and missteps – like selling off his early Netflix stocks. Whoops. 

U.K. wunderkind Jon Greenaway, 27, a.k.a. @TheLitCritGuy, explains capitalism through the lens of classic horror stories by, for example, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker, concluding that our economic system and digital dystopia is every bit as scary as something Ray Bradbury could conjure. (Indeed, although he doesn’t mention it, Poor Things, the current horror film take on Frankenstein, is all about capitalism and depredation.) Gothic Marxism is alive and well, argues Greenaway, who somehow concludes his story with optimism for a not-too-far-in-the-future utopia.

Unlike some others on this list, Bloomberg reporter Akshat Rathi, host of the popular Zero podcast, is also refreshingly optimistic about the state of the world. While certainly we’re living in a climate emergency, we’re already seeing viable solutions within the “green economy.” Rathi darts to all corners of the globe to find the people and policies flourishing – and profiting – from environmental innovations, including electric batteries in China, Indian solar plants and carbon-storing Texas oil fields. Since it’s “cheaper to save the world than destroy it,” capitalism could work out in our favour.

Greece’s former Minister of Finance, a maverick economist, is renowned for taking on the global financial order that crippled his country during its 2015 debt crisis. He has moved on from that economic moment to hearing the death knell play for capitalism, the system he fought. So, the next time you pop something mindlessly into your Amazon cart, stop for a hot minute to think about Varoufakis’ theory of “technofeudalism” – the idea that, just like serfs who served their feudal lords, we now serve tech overlords like Google and Apple by buying whatever their algorithm has trained us to want. The book is both conversational and accessible, and pushes hard against the cloud’s ever-expanding power.

The co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods Market, everyone’s swankiest (most expensive) organic grocery store, is one example where capitalism and environmentalism are sympatico. The recipe for success is the heart of this book, which chronicles Mackey’s four decades transforming Whole Foods from crunchy start-up to US$13-billion business (when it was then bought by Amazon) whose green sensibilities transformed “big grocery.” Whole Foods championed the elimination of plastic bags, sold meat from humanely raised animals and installed electric vehicle chargers long before everyone else – not without its share of conflicts and mistakes along the way. 

Hot on the heels of Mao and Markets, named the best book of 2022 by The Financial Times, the California-born economist turns his attention to the United States in The Profiteers. Here, the Cambridge University professor argues capitalism allows companies to hoodwink average folks by passing on corporate costs – low wages and environmental damage, for example – which shifts the burden to the people to pay, through their taxes, for government programs like food stamps and reclamation projects, all without sharing a dime of the massive profits. Marquis concludes with a call for a new, more sustainable capitalism, based on equity and regeneration.