Hypercapitalism by Larry Gonick and Tim Kasser

You know if you want to read this book from the title. Maybe somewhat from the author, too: Gonick has been making non-fiction comics, most famously the Cartoon History of series, for forty-some years, in a caption-filled, backed-up-by-references style that crams a lot of facts and details into interesting pages.

Gonick tends to work with collaborators on his more topic-specific books, so this time out he's partnered with psychologist and academic Tim Kasser to tell the story of the modern American economy in Hypercapitalism: The Modern Economy, Its Values, and How to Change Them.

That last bit is the part that will attract or drive away people the most, of course. There's a whole host of libertarian techbros who think capitalism at its more rapacious is just perfect, and wouldn't want to change anything. (They'll likely change their minds, if they live long enough and get battered by life enough - but many such bros start off on Third Base and never do get battered by life; that's how they became such bros to begin with.)

Gonick's books tend to have a narrator figure: in this case it's a version of Kasser, our subject-matter expert, who walks through all of the concepts and structures here. They start off with the basics of capitalism - producers, consumers, profit, labor, competition, work - and then immediately get into the more modern additions, starting with the "person" of the corporation.

Like all of Gonick's books, it's in something that resembles comics, but is much denser informationally. Every page has blocks of seemingly hand-lettered text and a few scattered panels. It's a model that's remarkably good for getting across fairly complex topics and ideas somewhat quickly and at getting into the depths and complexities of its ideas without just skimming the surface.

Again, if you think corporations are an uniformly good thing, you will hate this book. Kasser and Gonick are mildly lefty, and, like so many pesky lefties, they have facts and data and research on their sides, to show how unbridled capitalism has been a bad thing for human beings and that bridles are common in various places all over the world and can be implemented wherever there is the political will to do so.

I think this is still Gonick's most recent book, even though it's from 2018. I like the way he organizes information, and still have hopes he's working on some random history book now that will pop up unexpectedly. He's like no one else in American comics, and his work is a real treasure: deep and thoughtful and well-researched and always aiming back to its sources. This is another fine book in that tradition, even if it is a somewhat more controversial topic.

(Though I do hate the fact that "we should improve society, somewhat" is considered controversial in my country these days. It's a sad world we live in.)