David Graeber

David Graeber (1961–2020) was an American anthropologist, activist and public intellectual. He earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago after fieldwork in Madagascar, later teaching at Yale, Goldsmiths and the London School of Economics. He was also active in the alter-globalization movement and helped establish Occupy Wall Street.

His books bring anthropology into arguments about political economy and everyday life. Graeber repeatedly asked how debt becomes a moral obligation, why bureaucracies multiply and why societies accept work that even workers consider pointless. His prose combines historical sweep, sharp examples and a willingness to challenge stories presented as common sense.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years examined money, obligation and violence across centuries. Bullshit Jobs developed his influential argument about paid work experienced as socially useless. The Dawn of Everything, written with archaeologist David Wengrow and published after Graeber’s death, questioned familiar accounts in which agriculture, cities and hierarchy form a single inevitable sequence. It was shortlisted for the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.

Start with The Dawn of Everything. It is ambitious but inviting, moving among archaeological sites, Indigenous political thought and early cities to show how often people have altered their social arrangements. Readers drawn to its attack on historical inevitability can continue with Debt for Graeber’s equally expansive treatment of economics and morality.