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Book Summary and Reviews of The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World ... by David Graeber

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World ... by David Graeber

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World ...

Essays

by David Graeber

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Published:
  • Nov 2024, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews.

There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past. Thinking against the grain, Graeber was one of the few who dared to imagine a new understanding of the past and a liberatory vision of the future―to imagine a social order based on humans' fundamental freedom. In essays published over three decades and ranging across the biggest issues of our time― inequality, technology, the identity of "the West," democracy, art, power, anger, mutual aid, and protest―he challenges the old assumptions about political life. A trenchant critic of the order of things, and driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to human freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different.

During a moment of daunting upheaval and pervasive despair, the incisive, entertaining, and urgent essays collected in The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World ... edited and with an introduction by Nika Dubrovsky and with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, make for essential and inspiring reading. They are a profound reminder of Graeber's enduring significance as an iconic, playful, necessary thinker.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"This brilliant posthumous collection of essays by, and interviews with, anthropologist Graeber serves as a revealing portrait...It's an invigorating testament to a life spent challenging the status quo." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"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." —Library Journal

"One hopes for more from the Graeber archive, but this makes for a fine overview of his cage-rattling career." —Kirkus Reviews

This information about The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World ... was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

David Graeber Author Biography

Photo: Kalpesh Lathigra

David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, The Guardian, and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on September 2, 2020.

Link to David Graeber's Website

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