I SURVIVED CAPITALISM AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT

A vivid account of the many challenges millennials face while trying to make it in an unforgiving economy.

Pendleton opens her illuminating book with a tragedy: the suicide of a boyfriend who was suffering from the torments of money trouble and could see no way out of it. “That day,” she writes, “I learned a horrible lesson: capitalism is a matter of life and death. The stakes are high, and if you lose, it might come for you in ways you’d never expect.” As the author notes, the economic landscape could be characterized as dog-eat-dog, except that dogs are more cooperative and better socialized than all that. Exhibit A is a photographer the author worked for who effectively bilked her out of a quarter of her paycheck; fortunately, she jumped studios to work for another photographer who was far more honest. This story leads to a sobering observation for the corporation-haters in the crowd: “Businesses are not intrinsically any more ethical just because they are small. If anything, data shows they tend to be less ethical overall.” Pendleton, like so many of her generation, trained hard for life in the economic doldrums, growing up poor in Fresno, California (“one of the poorest cities in the country”), and entering the workforce just in time for the Great Recession. A punk rock ethos also helped the author cultivate a mutual-aid, fight-the-power outlook on life, which plays out in both her personal story and in the short chapters of enumerated points of advice on things like what a credit score means and how to navigate workplace relationships (“Remember that your coworkers are not your friends”). All of this is extremely helpful to those who, like Pendleton, would otherwise have to figure it out for themselves.

Move on, Jim Cramer. Here’s the real deal—smart, undaunted, and eminently wise.