
The Story of Stuff
by Annie Leonard
What our stuff costs the world—really.
For you if
you've started to feel complicit in something you can't quite name but can't stop consuming
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$18 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
The Story of Stuff pulls back the curtain on the hidden life of everything we buy — where it comes from, who pays the real price, and where it ends up after we toss it “away.” With clarity and urgency, Leonard maps the global system of extraction, production, and disposal that fuels endless consumption while draining the planet and exploiting workers. It’s a wake-up call that turns everyday objects into evidence and shows how small personal choices connect to colossal structural harm. Eye-opening, infuriating, and empowering, it gives readers the tools to see the machine — and imagine something better.
Where This Book Lives
Part of a Reading Journey
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

The Corporation(2003)
dir. Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott
The 150-year rise of a legal 'person' with no soul.
A wide-ranging examination of the modern corporation as a legal 'person' — tracing its rise, its psychology, and the reformers and whistleblowers pushing back against it.
Why it’s here: Corporations gained the legal rights of a person a century and a half ago and never picked up the responsibilities that come with personhood. Chomsky, Klein, and even sympathetic CEOs get equal time here, and the argument holds up without needing to shout.

The True Cost(2015)
dir. Andrew Morgan
Who actually pays for a five-dollar shirt.
Traces fast fashion's global supply chain, from Bangladesh garment factories to Western closets, asking who really bears the cost of clothing that keeps getting cheaper.
Why it’s here: Follows the price of fast fashion all the way down the supply chain to the people who absorb the cost the price tag doesn't show — garment workers, mostly women, mostly invisible to the people wearing what they made.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Rest Is Resistance
Tricia Hersey

you are exhausted and need someone to tell you that your exhaustion is political and that rest is not laziness but resistance
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
David Graeber

Debt is 5,000 years old. It was always about power.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Caliban and the Witch
Silvia Federici

The witch hunts built capitalism. Federici proves it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Garbology
Edward Humes

102 tons of trash per American lifetime. What that says about us.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.








