Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This brilliant posthumous collection of essays by, and interviews with, anthropologist Graeber (The Dawn of Everything) serves as a revealing portrait of Graeber himself. In the interviews, he discusses his childhood as the son of lefty radicals, his teenage political coming-of-age, and his transformation into a public intellectual during the 2008 Occupy protests. The essays, meanwhile, function as a medley of his favorite themes. In his ambitious entry on the global history of democracy--which he sees at work not in "coercive" modern nation states but in egalitarian societies of the ancient and pre-colonized world that featured "ordinary people collectively managing their own affairs"--Graeber argues that people don't need to be coerced into cooperation, and aren't purely self-interested actors, but are inherently motivated by the desire to find consensus. This theme is taken up with gusto in his essay on play, which is also the grandest example of Graeber giving free rein to his restless intellect. Beginning with the "evolution through mutual aid" theory of 19th-century anarchist and naturalist Peter Kropotkin, who emphasized the role of cooperation and play in the natural world over the struggle of individuals, Graeber eventually leaps to particle physics, noting that the unpredictable wobble of the electron "is in no sense competing with other electrons," and thus that "at the very foundations of physical reality, we encounter freedom for its own sake." It's an invigorating testament to a life spent challenging the status quo. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
There is a sad beauty about this book. The sadness is present, of course, because this is a collection of essays and interviews carefully pieced together after the sudden death of Graeber (1961--2020), an influential and original thinker and the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, among other works. In the book, Graeber's words echo as it pieces apart themes of debt, democracy, play, care, the Occupy movement, piracy, puppets, police, and jobs deemed to be "bullshit." This book is also beautiful, though, in the way these essays brim with surprising angles, unexpected perspectives, and a joyful interest in the world. Graeber's abilities as an anthropologist, a professor, a nonviolent organizer, and an interpreter of anarchism all come together in a jovial prose that, even when one might disagree or not be able to catch the idealistic vision on display, strikes one as flowing from someone who would be enjoyable to argue with over a beer. VERDICT Deliberately off the mainstream, this engaging collection of intellectual, approachable essays is both a good entry point for those readers unfamiliar with Graeber's work as well as a worthwhile read for audiences who know his writing well.--Zachariah Motts
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Essays on politics, culture, and economics by the late anthropologist and activist. An anarchist philosopher at heart, Graeber was known in his too-short life for book-length explorations of democracy as practiced by Indigenous people, pirates, and rebels, as well as denunciations of capitalism and its--his term--bullshit jobs. The essays here open on a contrarian, controversial note: If there is such a thing as Western civilization, "a particularly incoherent concept," it's demonstrably "just as hostile to anything we would recognize as democracy as those of India, China, or Mesoamerica." A look around at the current political landscape, to say nothing of the polities of ancient Greece and Rome, would certainly back up the notion, but Graeber probes further, noting, for instance, that when the Portuguese colonized parts of South Asia, an Arab legal scholar advised an Indian ruler that it was legitimate to declare jihad "specifically because they destroyed a tolerant, pluralistic society in which Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Jews had always managed to coexist." Coexistence seems more problematic these days, but Graeber holds that the most meaningful strides toward it, and toward democracy itself, happen when communities decide to "manage their own affairs outside the purview of the state." Examining economics--one piece is a dialogue with French economist Thomas Piketty--Graeber renews his call for meaningful work, for a state that does not rely on personal taxes, and for resistance to power based on coercion and violence. Nika Dubrovsky's introduction quotes Jorge Luis Borges: "When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation." Certainly that's true of Graeber, to whose always readable books this should certainly be added. One hopes for more from the Graeber archive, but this makes for a fine overview of his cage-rattling career. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
