David Graeber - My Lite Summer Reading

It is rather striking to think that the very core of the Christian message, salvation itself, the sacrifice of God's own son to rescue humanity from eternal damnation, should be framed in the language of a financial transaction.
David Graeber, Debt - The First 5000 Years, p. 80 

Late into the depths of the silence of the night, the Oracle of Ottawa ponders many things. If  the Oracle was alive when the first English edition of Karl Marx's Capital came out and I saw it in a bookstore and picked it up and scanned it; would he have known how important it was? If the Oracle of Ottawa was alive just after the Second World War, and saw the first edition of the "General Theory" by Maynard Keynes, would he have realized its importance and slammed down the full retail price? The Oracle of Ottawa prides himself on his ability that he can spot the really great talent that only comes along a few precious times in every life time.

David Graeber - The next one....

It was one of those recent times that when the Oracle of Ottawa was convinced that he was indeed alive at the "end of history". Then I happened onto the very recent work of David Graeber, formally of Yale University, and now lauded as possibly one of the greatest anthropologists alive today. If you can get your hands on a copy of Debt - The First 5000 Years, I heartily recommend that you jump on it real fast, especially if it is the first edition! The Oracle of Ottawa has a sneaking suspicion that it will be worth a ton down the road.

The Oracle of Ottawa's experience is that works on economics and anthropology are seldom page turners! But that young lad David Graeber has blown that stereotype clean out of the water. Reading "Debt" is like watching a flock of sheep crossing a mine field. The fist sheep steps on a claymore, flies up into the air, only to land on another mine, which sort of causes a horrific chain reaction of flying blood, guts, grunts and wool! Mr. Graebers work will have the same effects on your ideas. But if you have been wondering, especially since 2008, whether everything you were taught in the school system was "really" true you will find deep and pleasurable gratification, with many references that you can check out yourself, that indeed, you were very perceptive! To read such a perfect dismantling and debunking of all the old sacred cows and their burgers is mighty educational, and very entertaining...

A conversation with anarchist David Graeber - Charlie Rose, 2006....