Debt: A 5000-Year History - A Comprehensive Look at the Impact of Debt on Society

Amazon Customer: Graeber's way of distilling many branches of history and culture into something that makes sense to read and turn what could be a dry subject into something at once engaging and outrageous, is quite the talent. No course in business, finance, economics or history is complete if this book is not included in the curriculum.

United States on Sep 29, 2023

Arthur G. Yarish: For those readers who may not be professionals but who may like to get beyond the mainstream of lock step opinions this is a basic book which will help those interested in getting ahead of the professionals and learn more they know.
Arturog

Mexico on Jul 16, 2023

T. S. Currey: An eye-opening account of history that turns so many things on its head, I thought I was at Cirque du Soleil

Australia on May 19, 2023

Mark999: One of three excellent books I have found, on the true nature and history of what we call money.

We fix "money", we fix civilization. If you value freedom, you need to learn this. Also great is "The Lost Science of Money", and "Real Honest Money".

The book is cheaply made, using paper a bit better than news paper; but is over 500 pages. Books like these should be made to last generations, if not a thousand years.

Canada on Apr 05, 2023

Alessandro Perilli: The book is an exceptional study on the origin of money. However, the book is not about how coinage and cash and banknotes, and the infrastructures around them, evolved. Instead, it's a study on how the concept of money came to be, why, when, and how ancient societies managed to achieve the things that money achieves before money existed.

More importantly, it's a study conducted by an anthropologist rather than an economist or a historian. That offers a unique perspective that, to me, is significantly more reliable than anything written by the other two kinds of professionals.

It's is a gripping story and a must-read if you are passionate about history or economics. However, the book has an additional, unsupected value for a completely different category of readers.

At the time of writing this review, the mainstream audience worldwide starts to learn about cryptocurrencies based on blockchains, NFT-based economies, and many other related concepts that go under the umbrella term of "web3".
Among the many criticisms against cryptocurrencies, there are some about the lack of support from the government, the fact that they represent virtual money not pegged to...

United Kingdom on Jan 17, 2022

Imperial Topaz: Graeber's book is a long, slow read, yet it is a fascinating page-turner for which I enjoyed EVERY SINGLE PAGE. I would highly recommend this five-star book to anyone who enjoys investigating the mysteries of economics in our modern world and to anyone who enjoys history, sociology, anthropology, or looking for major historical trends which tie together and explain world events.

I saw a few critical reviews while reading this book, and now that I have finished, my opinion is that anyone who negatively reviews this book only read a portion of it. Most of the critical reviews are dismissive of his "point-of-view" as being "wrong." However, anyone who has actually read the whole book realizes that he has stepped back and looked at these issues from multiple perspectives and through the lens of multiple disciplines. People who are upset by this book (or by the introductory chapters) are upset because today's economics teaching focuses only on a small piece of the "economics thought pie" (my term) which is out there. Graeber steps out into discussing pieces which are less covered (or not covered at all) in typical economics classes in the West of today. So, rather than reading...

United States on May 21, 2017

Chris Crawford: That’s the best short summary of this book. It has a great many good ideas, but they’re buried in such rank BS that I cannot recommend it to anybody who doesn’t already know a great deal about the subject. If you are willing to accept everything in this book as truthful, then you will be badly misled. If you can see past the many mistakes, then there’s some useful content.

The first few chapters demolish the decrepit notion that money was invented to grease the wheels of commerce by making it easier to break transactions down into manageable pieces. If you wanted to barter for a horse, you’d need to find something very expensive that the seller wanted in order to make the deal. If the seller didn’t happen to want a hundred bushels of barley, you couldn’t close a deal. But by making transactions in a standard medium — money — the deal could work because the seller would always be certain that the money he got from you would be usable for some other transaction involving property that the seller *did* want.

That was the standard textbook explanation of the development of money for many years. My impression is that historians never took it very...

United States on Mar 06, 2016

Amazon Customer: Despite reading many of the reviews, this book was not what I was expecting. I thought the book was about economic debt... it’s not... it’s mainly about psychology of debt. The difference is subtle but interesting.
The book is written by an academic for academic philosophers. It’s not intended for the general public, but if you’re prepared to wade through all that heavy language you will not be disappointed.
The book is an enormous storeroom of information about social history as seen through the eyes of an anthropologist rather than a historian or an economist. Each reader will extract the bits most useful and ignore the rest.
For me the book was about tribal bartering arrangements – the origins of money – why money was created – what is the purpose of money – the psychology of debt as opposed to the economics of debt – why is it considered theft to charge interest on a loan?
The book will appeal to cynics who see a world run by evil greedy people and would like to undo the social brainwashing we endure while growing up.
The book is an eye opener. The book contains few facts – the conclusions drawn are mostly those of the author. Read and decide...

United Kingdom on May 20, 2015