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Prof. Graeber is obviously an extremely competent anthropologist, and this well referenced book (with an over forty page bibliography!) contains some very plausible propositions. One is that credit systems emerged before barter and money, and that the state or other authorities with a monopoly on violence instated currency from the top down. Another is that our modern fiat money system is built on nothing more than trust, unreflective of any fundamentals whatsoever (although this is obvious to anyone who has studied our modern financial system, and is noted in many of the textbooks Prof. Graeber likes to slight). Unfortunately, apart from these two ideas, this book is disorganized, sloppily written and lacks an overarching thesis to tie its chapters together. One theme Prof. Graeber seeks to return to again and again is that our language of morality is shrouded in words we also use to describe financial transactions, but this rather simple observation is drowned in anthropological anecdotes and a rather long winded explication of Bruno Tharet's bizzare "primordial debt theory", both of which tend to obfuscate rather than clarify the matter at hand. His investigation of different modes of economic relations, which he titles communistic, exchange, and hierarchical strikes me as clumsily composed and derivative-there have been many challenges to the rational actor model of economic decision making (by Amartya Sen, Robert Frank etc) that Graeber both fails to mention and which are much more illuminating to the interested reader. His final chapter is particularly odd. He urges us to feel sympathy for the non-industrious poor because they "aren't doing us any harm" He attempts to refute the assertion of Austrian economist Von Mises (who I am not fan of) that in our current economy all creditors are not evil landlords but often ordinary individuals with a sneer rather than an argument. He encourages us to think of ways to reorganize our social and economic relations so that we are not so reliant upon debt, but does not offer any ideas in this vein (although he has challenged his responsibility to do so). There are many problems in the world today, from poverty in "third world countries" to lack of healthcare in the US. Rather than muse on the genealogy of morals and yearn for a return to the relations of extant primitive tribes, I'd prefer to get down to the hard business of figuring out pragmatic solutions to relieve suffering and improve our quality of life. While this book does offer some very creative thinking, I am not sure I would recommend it.