4 ms·

Debt: the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber is a controversial but rather important recent publication. I haven't seen it mentioned yet, so I wanted to recomme

• contingencies 10y ago
  I also came to recommend this: it's possibly the most interesting book I've ever read. (Maybe save TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 1: The Protocols) It cops a lot of flak from some conservative established economists though, probably because most of the book is dedicated to disassembling economic myth from the perspective of history and anthropology. Great case study of a fresh pair of eyes and an example of someone from one field applying different thinking to another field and coming to some very different conclusions. Can't recommend it enough.
  • davidivadavid 10y ago
    Conservative economists like Brad DeLong? Nah, I think it caught a lot of flack because a lot of the research it contains is sloppy at best. Some is downright hilarious, though, as you can see with the story of Apple according to Graeber: "Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages..." http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-the-absence-of-high-quality-delong-smackdowns-back-to-david-graeber.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-th...