Lee Simpson may seem like an unlikely candidate to don the mantel of anti-consumerist prophet. She is, after all, the former publisher of Canada's most successful women's lifestyles magazine, Chatelaine. But that is just the first of many surprising things about her new book My Year of Buying Nothing.
In the 1980s and '90s, Simpson oversaw the heady days of women's magazine publishing. Although proud of the excellent...