While "Dawn of Everything" may be the most significant thing that David Graeber ever wrote (alongside David Wengrow), "Debt" is his most significant work of scholarship, in my opinion. Debt is an extensive synthesis of anthropology, history, and economics, a work of 'big history' that attempts to challenge conventional ideas about money, markets, and their origins.

Graeber stated that, when conceiving this work, he wanted to write the big, ambitious type of book that anthropologists used to write, but don't anymore. In doing this, he followed the example of one of his biggest influences, Marcel Mauss, and his famous work,"The Gift." Debt is certainly ambitious, and Graeber held nothing back.

I must warn, this is not an easy read. That's not to say that Graeber wasn't an excellent writer, which he was. He examined the origins of money, markets, and debt, and then precedes to examine the entirety of human history from this lens. Graeber was a wicked intellect and an ardent left-anarchist, and his point of view permeates every sentence in this book. This is not your run-of-the-mill liberal centrist perspective. But his scholarship is strong. If you're willing to follow his argument through 5,000 years, from the beginning of interest-bearing loans to the present day, you will find your perspective on money significantly altered. I'd argue that this is true whether you are political right, left, or center.

This isn't a book about what we should do. It's more so a book about 'what happened' and 'what is currently happening.' It shows that our financial system is a shared delusion with a few winners and many losers. But isn't this just an extension of the powerful taking advantage of the powerless? As a good anarchist, Graeber certainly believed so. But, it is the way this process unfolds in our economic systems and how we unknowingly participate in it that is difficult to see. This book sheds an incredible amount of light on that.

This is a challenging read and a significant commitment, but will certainly expand your understanding of money, markets, debt, power and our society.

Extraordinary book. Graeber uses anthropology and history very adeptly to show that "other world is possible" without claiming what exactly could that be. Great wit and great control not to veer into evangelising of his particular proposition. After all, this would have focused critics on his alternative, rather than showing things that we just take for granted. Go read..

This book would be 5/5 stars just for the reframing of what "freedom" means alone. But it's also so much more than that, so yea. 5/5 stars. Fantastic read, even for someone who doesn't much care for non-fiction.