Debt : The First 5000 Years (Updated and Expanded) - Softcover

David Graeber

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1612194192 ISBN 13: 9781612194196

Publisher: Melville House Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

As heard on the major BBC Radio 4 Series: 'Promises, Promises: A History of Debt' A revised and updated edition of the international bestseller and award-winning study of debt. David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, and one of the organisers of Occupy Wall Street, presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that long before there was money, there was debt. In this sweeping study, Graeber argues that our current ideas about money are limited, if not completely wrong. Society has always been divided into debtors and creditors, and debt and forgiveness have been at the centre of political debate long before money existed. Graeber shows how we are still fighting these battles today, and the financial crisis is an urgent and global example of that.

About this title

Review:

'A brilliant, deeply original political thinker' - Rebecca Solnit

' I loved this book' - Thomas Piketty, author of 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century'

'One of the year's most influential books' - Paul Mason, The Guardian

'Fascinating... Graeber's book is not just thought provoking, but also exceedingly timely' - Gillian Tett, Financial Times

'When you read this you'll be cleverer' - Russell Brand

'Brilliant, unexpectedly funny, and provides many bracing perspectives on the subject' - A 2012 Book of the Year in The Spectator

'The most important theory book I've read this year, an essential take on the current crisis by an anarchist anthropologist who combines credentials with readability' - Laurie Penny's Book of 2012 in the New Statesman

'The book is more readable and entertaining than I can indicate... It is a meditation on debt, tribute, gifts, religion and the false history of money. Graeber is a scholarly researcher, an activist and a public intellectual.' - Peter Carey, The Observer

'Remarkable' - --Giles Fraser

"David came round my house in east London to talk to me about revolution. I knew immediately that I'd like him, he just had one of those faces." - Russell Brand talks about his admiration for David Graeber in The Guardian

'A startlingly original thinker... able to convey complicated ideas with wit and clarity' - --The Telegraph

About the Author:

DAVID GRAEBER teaches anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, and Direct Action: An Ethnography. He has written for The Guardian, Harper's, The Nation, The Baffler, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Left Review.

About this edition

• Publisher: Melville House Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1612194192
• ISBN 13: 9781612194196
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 556