Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Updated and Expanded

Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Updated and Expanded

Graeber, David

Paperback

EconomicsGeneral World History

Publisher Price: $22.99

ISBN10: 1612194192
ISBN13: 9781612194196
Publisher: Melville House Pub
Published: Oct 28 2014
Pages: 560
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.60 Width: 5.60 Depth: 8.10
Language: English
The groundbreaking international best-seller that turns everything you think about money, debt, and society on its head--from the brilliant, deeply original political thinker David Graeber (Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me)

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 that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors--which lives on in full force to this day.

So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Renaissance Italy to Imperial 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.

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