Now in paperback, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber’s “fresh . . . fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debtHere 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 ...

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocen...

This manifesto is the definitive work of Abdullah Öcalan, crucial for understanding the Kurdish revolution. Here Öcalan outlines a democratic alternative for the Middle East.A criticism that limits itself to capitalism is too superficial, Öcalan argues, and turns his eyes to the underlying structures of civilization. Rethinking the methods of understanding culture, politics, and society, he provides the tools for what he calls a sociology of freedom.Civilization: The Age of...

In anthropology as much as in popular imagination, kings are figures of fascination and intrigue, heroes or tyrants in ways presidents and prime ministers can never be. This collection of essays by two of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists—David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins—explores what kingship actually is, historically and anthropologically. As they show, kings are symbols for more than just sovereignty: indeed, the study of kingship offers a unique window into fundamental d...

Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews."The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as Debt and the breakout New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengr...

From the author of the international bestseller Debt: The First 5,000 Years comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our livesWhere does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence?To answer these questions, the anthropologist David Graeber—one of our most important and provocative thinkers—traces the...

A wonderful collection of questions and reflections on the state of the movement today, where we came from, and where we might be going. It is all too rare that in the process of creating the movement and living the moment, participants and thinkers step back and ask the most pressing questions. This book is an important step.” Marina Sitrin, Occupy Wall Street organizer and author of HorizontalismWe have all been swept up by the momentum of the Occupy movement. We have s...

The final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything.Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.In graduate school, D...

One hundred years after his death, Peter Kropotkin is still one of the most inspirational figures of the anarchist movement. It is often forgotten that Kropotkin was also a world-renowned geographer whose seminal critique of the hypothesis of competition promoted by Social Darwinism helped revolutionize modern evolutionary theory. An admirer of Darwin, he used his observations of life in Siberia as the basis for his 1902 collection of essays Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Krop...

What if the modern economy is full of jobs that everyone secretly knows are meaningless—but no one is allowed to admit it? In this incendiary and darkly funny essay, anthropologist David Graeber takes a flamethrower to the world of pointless bureaucracy, soul-crushing middle management, and the quiet misery of workers paid to pretend.Bullshit Jobs is part polemic, part social theory, and part cathartic scream—a razor-sharp diagnosis of a system that rewards appearance over substance...

One hundred years after his death, Peter Kropotkin is still one of the most inspirational figures of the anarchist movement. It is often forgotten that Kropotkin was also a world-renowned geographer whose seminal critique of the hypothesis of competition promoted by Social Darwinism helped revolutionize modern evolutionary theory. An admirer of Darwin, he used his observations of life in Siberia as the basis for his 1902 collection of essays Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Kropotkin dem...

A bold rethinking of the most powerful political idea in the world—democracy—and the story of how radical democracy can yet transform America, from the co-author of The Dawn of EverythingDemocracy has been the American religion since before the Revolution—from New England town halls to the multicultural democracy of Atlantic pirate ships. But can our current political system, one that seems responsive only to the wealthiest among us and leaves most America...