Tescopoly: How One Shop Came Out on Top and Why It Matters

By: Andrew Simms

This is no lightweight, it's quite academic. Well reasoned and explained in great detail. Scares the life out of you, with good reason.

I wrote a full review in my allotment diary - if you don't read the book read my review of Tescopoly

 Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate

By: Felicity Lawrence

Warning! This is the effect this book had on one reader:

I've gone right off chicken (only organic and free range from now on), I've eaten my last ready meal, I think I'm going to try baking my own bread, definately Fair Trade bananas and coffee from now on and I've just taken over an allotment to grow some of my own fruit and veg. Its time to start enjoying good locally produced and carefully reared/grown food again.

If you really care - buy it.

 Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets

By: Joanna Blythman

From an Amazon review that says it better than I can:

It explodes the myth that supermarkets offer the customer real 'choice' in the products they offer and that they are being more environmentally friendly, as they waste vasts amounts of fuel with their transportation policies, both at home and abroad. They also throw away perfectly edible fruit and vegetables because they don't meet 'their' standards and 'fine' suppliers £25 for each product returned to them by customers, even if the bag (such as on potatoes) splits by accident.

It's not expensive - so find out what is really going on.

 The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

By: Greg Palast

An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth About Globalization, Corporate Cons and High Finance Fraudsters

The heart of the book is about the institutionalised economic criminal activity that is part and parcel of the politics of globalisation. Palast portrays the IMF, the World Bank and the assorted group of agencies as institutions that "dream up, then dictate, the terms of the new international economics" to create what he describes as "the Golden Straitjacket" of globalisation. He produces vivid case studies from across the globe to challenge even the most paranoid of conspiracy theorists. On the whole, the book claims to show that economic "assistance plans" presided over by these institutions amount to a (so far) guaranteed sentence of economic damnation.

 Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain

By: George Monbiot

Monbiot takes a close look at how this green and pleasant isle has been delivered into unaccountable corporate control with disastrous results for local communities and for democracy itself.

Now the house of cards is collapsing into a credit black hole, how we got to where we are becomes more relevant.