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Debt - Updated and Expanded
- The First 5,000 Years
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Now in audio, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber's "fresh...fascinating...thought-provoking...and exceedingly timely" (Financial Times) history of debt.
Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like "guilt", "sin", and "redemption") derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.
What the critics say
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What listeners say about Debt - Updated and Expanded
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sohaib Shahid
- 2021-01-01
Interesting but heavy
Very important and interesting information that I think everyone should know. However, as Graeber says in the book this started out as an academic book; hence it is a dense book that takes a lot of time and concentration to listen to. Graeber’s later work is an easier listen for the layman, but this book covers topics that are equally important to
understand.
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- Michael Petsalis
- 2020-11-11
Changes your framework
As best as I can understand the main thesis, it is saying that debt, once quantified, became an instrument of control even often to the extent of slavery. Debt is also now the foundation of inequality as it affects different classes differently, because it is applied most usuriously to the ‘industrious poor’ and most generously to élite ‘rentiers’.
Time to re-think capitalism. On to the Piketty books.
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2 people found this helpful
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- A humble student
- 2024-01-05
A true story of origins of debt
I have a new understanding of debt after listening to this book. My understanding was previously based on a fictional economic story. Slavery and debt are intrinsically linked. Just Google "Bonded labor in India".
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- Bartek B
- 2023-11-04
Superbly read, very interesting subject
The author covers a lot of ground, and sometimes the subject is a little dense for an audio book. All the same, this was a fascinating journey through the history of debt and human societies.
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- Mitch
- 2023-10-14
Humbling
Another great book that lifted me up above myself, so I could look down and see why I do what I do.
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- John Sterne
- 2023-09-10
Historical substance but otherwise a vanity piece.
Not the worst book Graber has written, several others vye for that position and this title definitely has some substance in the historical aspects presented, particularly regarding the myth of Barter as the origin of money... However, that's where the substance pretty nearly ends. Much of the opinions and conclusions drawn are based on ideological assumptions of an empty headed academic-activist typical of today's modern age.
While I can't confirm nor disprove the anthropological evidences presented, many of the findings regarding ancient and historical peoples seem reasonable and plausible. However, Graber continuously injects ideological assumptions even within the ancient references. He colours the actions of the past with assumptions made from a very distant and emtremely different modern lens. He casts dispersions of modern motivations and interpretations regarding ancient and tribal people's and the actions of those peoples much in the same way many modern ideological writers and would be re-writers of history do, specifically that of the "Noble Savage. " while in succeeding chapters then throws the modern developments of economy, capitalism and freedom, as we know it today, entirely under the bus. He very much twists the concepts of contractual freedom and debt peonage/slavery together much as many activist writers of his kind do, as if they are one in the same... And as is typical, continues the the ideological persecution of the "rich" then takes it to another level and extends that persecution to "the industrious working class." In the end he goes so far as to suggest that it's, somehow not only ok to be a member of the "idle poor, " (what he calls the non-industrious) but Infact that they are people who should be placed upon a pedestal, their debts cancelled in the spirit of equality and suggests that "Biblical style Jubilee" (universal world wide debt forgiveness) is the answer to all our modern problems because, as is also typical, people who lend are clearly "the evil doers" in this world. Never once does he bring up the origination of money, in a modern context, nor call into question the morality of unlimited creation, or unlimited needs of all, being satisfied by the very real practicalities of a world of limited resources. I actual question whether this guy thinks for himself at all.
Still as long as one keeps an actual open mind and doesn't just take this guy on his word alone or lend too much authority to his, obviously one sided, politically motivated erudition and writing then there may still be some elements of substance to be found with this work. Just be prepared to have that thrown at you from the self-serving perspective of a political activist because he couches nearly everything in the book within a cloak of his ideology.
Should you read this? Probably not. Does it have any value at all? Perhaps a little. 🤏🏽
One thing I will give him is that he's a decent writer and the beginning chapters are compelling enough to keep reading/listening later he goes off the tracks.
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- Cameron Britton
- 2023-04-06
Interesting, if just a bit forgettable
For such a long book about debt, I can only recall a handful of highlights. Maybe this is on me. Interesting and worth a listen, while at the same time a bit long and boring.
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- TM
- 2022-09-07
Very eye opening!
A great overview of the various ways we have structured money throughout the past 5000 years. Although at times it may get fairly heavy with details, the overall picture is easy to follow and fascinating. Narration is clear and easy to listen to.
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- Ohman Foo
- 2022-07-06
Kinda annoying style of writing but is enthralling
Great sprawling material. A true accounting for the history of money and relations between people and power.
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- Jessie
- 2021-12-21
Great Book
Great book. I'll need to listen a couple more times to get more information out of it. This book has a big communist bias, that can be expected from an institutional academic. I still gave it 5 stars. Color within the lines boys.
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