Debt: the first 5000 years by David Graeber

[forestj]

In my opinion, this might be one of the most rigorous historical analysis of what money is, where it came from, and what it means to us.

Money is one of the most important things in our lives, and something that we are all very familiar with on this forum.

I'm curious to hear what some other people think about this book, if they have read it, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

If you want to get the lite version, here's the author's talk about the book at Google:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs

[PKFFW]

Very interesting book.

Particularly in light of the self righteous "you must pay your debts or you are a no-good loser with no morals or sense of personal responsibility" philosophy that seems so in vogue these days.

[Telecaster]

Looks like a very interesting book, thanks. 

[zaphod4prez]

This is one of my favorite books. His conclusions may be surprising to many, but he reaches them through very "normal" premises and rigorous argumentation & support.

The book inspired me to work to create a community of "baseline communism" with my friends. While he calls this "communism," it's really just a support community, where there's no premise of equal exchange— rather, we all give freely and support each other as best we're able. It makes for much tighter friendships and more vibrant communities.

Two related book recommendations, these are both also about the theory of money, finance, economics, and our current political system:
-Money by Eric Lonergan. Seriously, this is one of the best books I've ever read and I regularly re-read it. He does an incredible job of breaking down and explaining the way money works, what it is, etc. It provides a complement to Graeber's work— he comes from a very different direction, but does a great job of revealing the underlying mechanisms behind our current economic/political system just like Graeber does. It would be useful to have a very basic baseline level of knowledge about economics before reading this, but you can do without. This one is a lot more conventional than Graeber, and the next book I recommend is farily radical, just as Graeber is. Link to Amazon (non-affiliate, obviously): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Money-Art-Living-Eric-Lonergan/dp/1844658236/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
-The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance by Franco "Bifo" Berardi. Brilliant (though very wordy) analysis of the speeding-up that our society has recently gone through. It's very short, but the entire time I read it, I was constantly nodding my head and having tiny epiphanies. Beware...he is sooo verbose. He's really writing for critical theory people I think, but if you're willing to wade through all that, then it's well worth it.

[Filliteracy]

Read it back in 2011, absolutely loved the book. Quite hard to remember now, but I remember feeling quite enlightened in realizing currency was something administrators invented to facilitate taxing the population and paying for military power. Or how debt was once passed on from generation onwards, and how large wedding ceremonies were used to create debt and servitude. Really gives you an interesting well thought out perspective/big picture from an angle I had never considered. I still have it, in fact, and will probably go read it again to refresh my memory.