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A tremendous loss. I would highly recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years to anyone here.
by mxwsn 6y ago
A tremendous loss. I would highly recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years to anyone here.
- rhizome31 6y agoYes, to give a bit more info, this is an anthropology book. You will learn about incredible customs from various societies around the world and history. It also often touches on feminism because the main topic of the book (debt) and the situation of women are often tightly linked.
- pinewurst 6y agoBut not a boring one if people are afraid of that. I really enjoyed the mixture of history and anthropology in Debt.
- zingplex 6y agoI think you're underselling it. The book is without question the most interesting I've read in the past twelve months. It took me several months to read, not because it was dull but because the ideas it presented every few pages were so thought provoking that a great deal of pondering was required to understand their implications.
- marmaduke 6y ago> without question the most interesting I've read in the past twelve month I think for me, the past decade.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- loceng 6y agoThere's an "Updated and Expanded" version as well.
- jb775 6y agoThis book changed the way I think about many things in the world. Highly recommended.
- TheTrotters 6y agoHere’s a good critique of Debt by Noah Smith: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html?m=1 http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/book-review-debt-...
- mtts 6y agoNo need to share this link twice. Especially since the piece is itself more of an unfocused mess than the book it intends to critique.
- paganel 6y agoThanks for that link, it kind of already shows its age (2014), it was from a time when people still believed that capitalism was worthy of being defended out in the open (and when calling someone a "leftist" was still seen as a coming from the "center", not from the other political extreme). Interesting how fast things change.
- yarrel 6y agoYou've provided the wrong link. That's a link to a bad critique of Debt by Noah Smith. Can you edit your comment to point to the good one?
- LudwigNagasena 6y agoI don’t like Noah but I agree with his point that Graeber’s book, which is named Debt, is actually not about debt and doesn’t explain debt much and even misrepresents modern economics. It is just a topic that lets Graeber go on tangents and moralize.
- tacheiordache 6y agoModern economics is twisted in such ways that Graeber attempts to demistify it. Honestly, have you read the book?
- LudwigNagasena 6y ago
- jseliger 6y agoI wouldn't: https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/david-graeber-april-fools-day-post.html https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/david-graeber-april-f...
- lmohseni 6y agoHmm, seems DeLong might have some sort of animus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707
- samatman 6y agoI'll take a middle road here: I would recommend reading the book, but not uncritically. It's valuable, and part of a conversation which is quite current. But it isn't gospel.
- jacquesm 6y agoNo books are gospel, and everything should be read critically, especially books marked as gospel.