A culturally relevant account of how debt came to be the new red. TBA

If you think capitalism and modern economics are the worst thing to ever happen to the world, this will be a great feel good read for you. If you like your books to be robustly argued with appropriate credence given to opposing arguments, I suggest you pick up something else. Graeber seems to consider those who disagree with him as either naive, blindsided by economic theory, or simply greedy. It's a little hard to pin down exactly what Graeber wants to argue; his preferred method of exposition

I would call this an interesting but dangerous book. As opposed to other books in which every moment was a learning and enlightening enjoyment this book was exhaustingly tense because I found it to be a very confusing mix of dangerous (but plausible) ideas written in a smart way, and interesting historical or world data. So, I'll start the review with the negative things, and then move onto the positive ones:- the author seems to have a clear agenda, of attacking capitalism & free market ideas,

(2020-09-03 Update: RIP David Graeber, your works have been an inspiration, may they continue to inspire... here's one last gem, a discussion between Graeber, Michael Hudson and Guy Standing: https://youtu.be/1rlIXAUGans)This dream book got me to love the potential of nonfiction. I first read this after my undergrad, and the book’s spirit of social imagination remains transformative. How can we change the world if we cannot even imagine the change? (The negative book reviews describe this book a...

I think of Goodreads stars as the following: 1, shouldn't have been published; 2, terrible; 3, pretty good; 4, really good; 5, everyone should read this (because it's eye-opening, incredibly skillful, and/or beautiful).Debt is a five-star book.Graeber's history encompasses not just history, but anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, political science, economics, religious studies, and finance as he details the history and definition of "debt." The conclusions he draws are--especially i...

As I was reading this I couldn’t help thinking how much it reminded me of The Gift by Marcel Mauss. I got halfway through The Gift recently, and even though it is very short, I still got distracted with other things and haven’t finish it yet – which, as the author of this says, makes me a bit like Mauss himself. I will finish it – but almost don’t need to now.This book is born out of a chance conversation about third-world debt the author had a woman at a party. She felt that paying one’s debts

As a sociologist, I've been despairing of late at the paucity of imagination and theoretical innovation in social science research. Academics, perhaps because of the need to publish quickly and garner grant money, seem content to only add statistical validation to already established conclusions. Or, a la David Harvey, to regurgitate Marx with minor variation, with a focus solely on the neoliberal period, and in US/Eurocentric fashion. Debt: The First 5,000 Years redeems the social sciences. Not...

“As it turns out, we don't "all" have to pay our debts. Only some of us do.” ― David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 YearsA fascinating exploration of debt, money, barter, and the credit systems used by man for thousands of years. Sure it has biases and like Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a bit too idealistic, but still -- wow -- an amazing read. While most economic books are still battling over the binary capitalism::socialism model, Graeber quietly flips both boats (or if not flips, roc...

For a very long time, the intellectual consensus has been that we can no longer ask Great Questions. Increasingly, it’s looking like we have no other choice. Three years ago, I went on vacation in the north of Spain, to the city of A Coruña. There, perched on the jagged rocks below the Roman lighthouse, I read Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. The crashing sound of ocean waves just seemed an appropriate accompaniment to Spengler’s grandiose attempt to analyze all of human history. At it

I had a difficult time slogging through Debt. It shares a similar problem with Niall Fergeson's completely unreadable "the Ascent of Money:" it mixes in the author's politics and political leanings with history to give everything this weird political sheen (in this case left to Fergeson's right.) In this case, Graeber's book covers more facts than political lecturing but it's bumped several stars for being overt.However, Debt is a worthy read for anyone interested in the span of history from ear...

This might be the most important book you read this decade. Graeber asks what the phrase "You have to pay your debts" really means, and his answer involves a looping historical, anthropological, linguistic, and philosophical inquiry into the nature of currency, coinage, and capitalism.As Graeber notes, the standard economic story of the development of coinage: that bartering diverse goods (potatoes for shoes for sheep for shovels) was so inconvenient that people developed cash to be more efficie...

War justifies coin justifies war.This is my second Graeber read and it’s clear that he was a towering intellect in not only anthropology but economics and sociology. I scarcely read an author who completely upends how I perceive the modern economy and even the very fabric of society. This book is not really about debt, it’s about looking behind the curtain of the underpinnings of the global economy and exposing it for what it really is: collusion of the state and market to create a communism of

I have read many many books--I am a professor and it is my job to read. This is the only book I would label a "Must Read." It's that simple--everyone must read this book. It blew my mind--figuratively, of course. My area is banking and finance and so I am not unfamiliar with the standard banking story. But Graeber starts way before any other book I've ever read on the subject. By the time you get to modern banking and the bank of England, what you've been told is irrelevant. It's also just very

A superb book. Throughout reading this book I felt like little epiphanies were going off in my head as Graeber presented new information or new analyses that I hadn't considered before. Graeber manages to expose the violence, coercion and inequality that has become sublimated in the bland language of credit and debt so that most of us see debt as an impersonal, objective and moral issue. He opens with an anecdote that inspired him to write this book in the first place, describing attending a par...