Bestselling “overeducated cartoonist” Larry Gonick has delighted readers for years with sharp, digestible, and funny accounts of everything from the history of the universe to the intricacies of calculus. Now Gonick teams up with psychologist and scholar Tim Kasser to create an accessible and trenchant cartoon guide to how global, privatizing, market-worshipping hypercapitalism threatens human well-being, social justice, and the planet. But Gonick and Kasser don’t stop at an analysis of how the economic system got out of whack—they also point the way to a healthier future.

A primer for the post-Occupy generation, Hypercapitalism draws from contemporary research on values, well-being, and consumerism to describe concepts (corporate power, free trade, privatization, deregulation) that are critical for understanding the world we live in, and movements (voluntary simplicity, sharing, alternatives to GDP, protests) that have developed in response to the system. Gonick and Kasser’s pointed and profound cartoon narratives provide a deep exploration of the global economy and the movements seeking to change it, all rendered in clear, graphic—and sometimes hilarious—terms.