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text 2019-07-17 23:46
Crowdsourced History Reading -- TA's List No. 10: Stragglers and Addenda
Ancient Egypt - David P. Silverman
A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya - Linda Schele,David A. Freidel
Joseph Fouché: Bildnis eines politischen Menschen - Stefan Zweig
Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber
A Brief History Of Time: From Big Bang To Black Holes - Stephen Hawking
The Story of My Life: The Restored Edition (Modern Library Classics) - Helen Keller,James Berger
The Gulag Archipelago Abridged An Experiment in Literary Investigation - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
An Autobiography - Robert Herrick,Agatha Christie

* 5 books that didn't seem to fit onto any other list, and

* 3 addenda which will also go, retroactively, onto the "first hand accounts", "women's history" and "literary and cultural history" lists.

 

THE STRAGGLERS

* David P. Silverman: Ancient Egypt
* Linda Schele & David A. Freidel: A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya

* Stefan Zweig: Joseph Fouché
* David Graeber: Debt: The First 5,000 Years
* Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time

 

THE ADDENDA

* Helen Keller: The Story of My Life
* Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago

* Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

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review 2014-10-23 00:02
Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber

First half 5 stars, second half 3 stars.

When I was in the 5th grade, we had a social studies unit centered around a book called Life On Paradise Island. It was a cartoonish book that told the tale of how a modern economy is developed. It started with the islanders trading coconuts for fish. Of course things got complicated when the coconut guy didn't need or want fish, but he wanted a hut built and the hut builder wanted something else. Eventually a stone currency was developed and it made trading so much easier and lead to thing like inter-island trade, unions, recessions, and even war. The whole thing was supposed to be a microcosm of how an economy works, and I must say that it left an impression on me since I still remember it. The whole premise is that barter leads to the concept of money and once you have money, all sorts of things can happen. Turns out, that premise may not be right.

In Debt, the author debunks the theory that barter begets money. His basic premise is that debt came first. Not being an economist, this seems a bit like a chicken & egg argument. However, the author presents the concept of worth and debt in an anthropological and sociological context which is very compelling. The first half of the book is strong, especially with respect to human relationships and worth. The chapter called Honor and Degradation, or, On the Foundations of Contemporary Civilization goes into the dynamics of human relationships and discusses slavery at length, a topic that I realize I know very little. The chapters after the middle ages were ok, just not as interesting to me. The book was refreshingly free of any capitalism vs. socialism (aka left vs. right) debates, and even argues that parts of our lives are very communistic.

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review 2013-09-14 00:00
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology - David Graeber Highly readable, despite being written by an academic; addresses many of the questions I had as a person new to anarchism and anarchist thought. Also an excellent critique of current systems of thought regarding the necessity of states.
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review 2013-07-23 00:00
Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber Iconoclastic and brilliant -- this is the kind of book where you feel like the scales have fallen from your eyes, and you want to stand on street corners handing out copies and proselytizing. I'll admit frankly there's a lot about finance and debt that still completely puzzles me, but Graeber's thesis works around and with precisely this kind of befuddlement, tracing its causes and uses for those in power and in the military over the course of human history. Highly, highly recommended.
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review 2013-04-17 00:00
The Baffler No. 22
The Baffler No. 22 - John Summers, Evgen... The Baffler No. 22 - John Summers, Evgeny Morozov, David Graeber, Thomas Frank, Heather Havrilesky, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Christian Lorentzen, Hussein Ibish, Chris Bray Outstanding reading. Fresh perspectives. Odd topics. Worth subscribing. The poetry didn't do much for me but otherwise I read and savored every word.
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