Books.

Finished 30 Sep 2026

Finished 25 Aug 2026

My goal has always been to understand money better through a more philosophical lens, which is what drew me to Debt in the first place. I wasn’t disappointed, even though the book turned out to be much more historical and anthropological than I expected.
At first I found some of those earlier sections a bit boring, especially as Graeber jumps through so many societies, religions and systems of exchange. But as the book moved through the Axial Age, the Middle Ages and eventually the Age of the Great Capitalist Empires, all of that earlier history started to pay off. I also really liked some of the more philosophical ideas, especially primordial debt, the idea that simply by being alive we already owe something to our ancestors, society, the gods or even the universe.

A core idea throughout the book is how much money ultimately depends on credit, obligation and trust. Graeber challenges the familiar Adam Smith story that money naturally emerged from barter, arguing that historically people often operated through systems of credit long before coins became common. Money was not necessarily a physical thing changing hands, but a way of measuring who owed what to whom. Once an obligation can be quantified, it can also become impersonal, transferable and enforceable.

I also liked how the book challenges the idea that earlier economies were somehow primitive. Credit, interest, speculation and other financial systems have existed in different forms for thousands of years. The modern system is vastly more complicated, but underneath it you can still recognise many of the same patterns.

The founding of the Bank of England was one of my favourite examples. In 1694, £1.2 million was raised from private subscribers and lent to the government to finance the king’s war with France. Those subscribers became shareholders and formed the Bank of England, which then began issuing paper notes that could circulate as money. I found that really interesting because, in a sense, the whole thing rested on a promise: the state owed the Bank money, people trusted that debt would be honoured, and that confidence helped turn pieces of paper into something other people were willing to accept as money. Basically, confidence in the king’s promise became money. Crazy stuff lol.

Graeber keeps returning to this relationship between warriors and financiers. Governments need credit, especially to expand and fight wars, while creditors need powerful states capable of enforcing obligations. His argument is that this relationship never really disappeared, it just became more sophisticated.

One idea that helped connect this to the modern system was Graeber’s explanation of taxation. If a king could mint his own coins, why tax people in those same coins? Part of the answer was that taxation created demand for the currency. Pay soldiers in your coins, demand taxes in those coins, and suddenly everyone needs them, creating a market around the army and the state.

You see a much larger and more complicated version of that logic when Graeber gets to the modern United States. After Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold in 1971, dollars accumulated around the world and foreign governments put huge amounts back into U.S. Treasury bonds. Graeber provocatively describes this as almost a kind of global tax: the rest of the world provides goods and resources while accumulating American IOUs that can continually be rolled over. I actually find that argument quite convincing. You could see some version of that during Covid, when the U.S. created huge amounts of money and the effects were felt globally, although obviously there were many other causes of inflation too.

He then connects this back to military power. The country at the centre of the global monetary system also has an unmatched ability to project force around the world. Whether or not you completely accept his argument, I found the continuity fascinating. The relationship between war, state debt and finance that existed centuries ago has, in his view, simply reached a global scale.

I also really liked his discussion of why China buys so much U.S. debt. If this debt is likely to keep being rolled over rather than one day being completely paid back, why would America’s biggest rival keep buying it? Graeber looks at older Chinese tribute systems, where China would sometimes give other states more than it received, partly as a way of keeping potentially troublesome neighbours complacent while maintaining the wider political order. I think the point is that power is not always about extracting as much as possible immediately. Sometimes maintaining a system that benefits you matters more.

Another interesting thread is the development of institutions that can outlive the individuals inside them. Graeber discusses Buddhist monasteries and eventually corporations, entities capable of owning property and accumulating wealth independently of any single person. We create these things collectively, but once they exist they can begin to feel almost autonomous. Really cool idea I want to explore further.

And maybe the darker part of Graeber’s argument is what happens when something as human and vague as moral obligation gets reduced to a number. Once debt becomes measurable, impersonal systems can enforce it and use it to organise someone’s future labour. You need to pay rent, a mortgage, student loans, credit, whatever it might be, so a large part of your future is already spoken for. In that sense, you’re forced to participate in the system in a way that has echoes of debt peonage, even if modern treatment is obviously far better haha.

What I found interesting is that if we really wanted to be completely cold and rational about what we owe, the whole idea starts to become almost absurd. We owe everything. We owe the people who raised us, strangers who built the things we use, people who wrote the books we read, and generations who created the knowledge and institutions we inherited. The chain is basically infinite. In that sense, the primordial debt idea comes back at the end for me. Human obligation is immeasurable, yet we have created systems that take certain obligations, put exact numbers on them, and then treat those numbers as sacred.

The book ends strongly on the idea that none of this is natural or inevitable. These systems are the result of thousands of years of history, political choices and institutions that humans created. But there is also some optimism in Graeber’s closing argument: if democracy is real, then we also have the power to change how these systems work for the better.

I don’t agree with every conclusion Graeber makes, but I think that is partly why I enjoyed it so much. It made things that normally feel completely ordinary, money, debt, states and corporations, suddenly feel strange again. Overall, I think it’s a really strong book, and for me it got better and better as it went on.

Finished 24 Jul 2026

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Finished 16 Sep 2025

A little gem of a book. don’t let the technical parts of the book deter you, those section are mostly case studies and examples the author tries to use to elaborate his approach to problem solving and learning. The most valuable chapters are actually the less technical ones.
A really really good book packed with a lot of wisdom and great philosophical insights about learning.

Finished 20 Aug 2025

Years ago I came across a YouTube video where Lex and Jordan Peterson had a conversation about whether this was one of the best books ever written. I thought this was pretentious, since that description is easily thrown around for a lot of books.

I had been meaning to read it after already tackling the author’s shorter works like Notes from the Underground and White Nights. The edition is a hefty one, around 1000+ pages, so I found it daunting to start. However, the moment I began reading I was immersed in the world, the characters, the complexity, and the conversations. For the first 200–400 pages there is mostly world building, yet the writing itself is so masterful. I am pretty sure a lot is lost through translation, and yet it still made me pause at several moments. Before I knew it, I realized I was reading one of the greatest works of literature ever written. It felt like I was engaging with a living, breathing, complex world.

And it is not just one or two moments. All throughout there are conversations and monologues that leave you stunned. The Grand Inquisitor. Father Zosima’s reflections on his life. The public procurator’s speeches at the trial. Even the ridiculous yet strangely profound things that come out of Fyodor Pavlovich’s mouth. The book is full of scenes like this that burn themselves into your memory.

Some of the discussions, especially between Ivan and Alyosha, will definitely stay with me forever. Dostoevsky argues both sides with such force that you feel the full weight of belief and doubt. The discussions about free will and suffering, “if there were no God it would be necessary to invent him.” Or even sections like, “people are even more certain than ever that they are completely free, and indeed they themselves have brought us their freedom and have laid it humbly at our feet. For nothing has ever been more unendurable to man and human society than freedom.”

The discussions of free will were fascinating, especially the idea that men will sacrifice their freedom to avoid the paralysis of choice and the suffering that comes with it. Again, I do feel that we see mostly what we want from a piece of literature, and this is not much different, but it does bring you to ask the question.

Even the smaller characters are alive with depth. Kolya (actually one of my favourite characters in the book actually) the boy far too clever for his age, felt like a mirror of adults who think they have mastered reason but are still just children worrying about appearances. Alyosha, in contrast, does not rationalize. He accepts life with all its contradictions. That is why people are drawn to him. And that line from Father Zosima, “The main thing is that you stop telling lies to yourself. The one who lies to himself and believes his own lies comes to a point where he can distinguish no truth either within himself or around him, and thus enters into a state of disrespect towards himself and others.” is one that stays with you.

Dostoevsky lays bare the raw essence of what it means to be human. You might scorn some of the characters initially, but you realise all too quickly that this is hypocritical, because we all have the propensity to be any of these characters given the right stimulus and circumstances. In fact, to love and to judge is to fully imagine yourself and see yourself in them.

To argue yourself into one position, then into its opposite, and still feel justified either way. He somehow weaves these grand philosophical ideas and discourse into a gripping murder mystery wrapped around family, morality, faith, and parenthood. Another thing I never expected is this was quite funny at times, sometimes some passages will get me smiling at how ridiculous some of it is.

This writeup does not come close to doing this book justice, I will read this again and again, and I’m sure my takeaway will be different or how I will find a new angle I have missed.

This is one of those books that genuinely changed my outlook on the world. It is thought provoking, humbling, unforgettable. It is one of those books that makes you realize you aren’t special or original, and that all those esoteric thoughts you think are exclusive to you are simply part of the human experience. And though this was written in the 1800s, we still grapple in the modern day with the same issues, making it a timeless piece that remains deeply relevant to what it means to be human.

For no matter how much we advance technologically as a society, human nature remains constant. Books like this remind us to take a step back, check our hubris, and realize we are simply human beings, creatures of passion, emotion, and contradiction. And yet it is exactly this contradiction that makes us human.

Worth every single second

Finished 15 Dec 2024

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Finished 25 Nov 2024

Wow, an amazing biography.

Finished 19 Nov 2024

Great book, it expresses the benefits of the impartial systems facilitated by the free market in most facets of society, similar to those already pioneered by Adam Smith. As much as we like to believe in the imposition of the minority on the majority based on the implied hypothetical benefits, reality time and time again proves otherwise. Reality is the ultimate judge. Are the arguments proposed perfect? No, I would disagree. However, if I had to summarise my key takeaway from the book, it would be this quote that perfectly encapsulates my interpretation of his ideas here,
“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”

Finished 14 Nov 2024

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Finished 21 Jul 2022

Should have read this long time ago

Finished 24 Jun 2022

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ちょっと難しい本だけど読んでいる経験はまるで夢を見ているのようだった。著者の言葉の選び方と使い方は上等てきだった。下巻の続きを読んでたまらない。

Finished 6 Nov 2019

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Finished 4 Jan 2015

This book has to be one of the best books I've ever read, its one of those rare books you don't want to end and will get you at the edge of your seat (literally for me)it's funny, had a satisfying ending, had a relatable main character, educational and so much more..seriously this book is a must read.

Finished 23 Nov 2014

Finished 20 Oct 2014

The last book in the series was a great ride but the climax failed to answer all the question the book imposed on its readers, and failed to give a satisfying ending to what had been a remarkable series.

Finished 18 Oct 2014

Finished 16 Oct 2014

This is how a sequel is done

Finished 4 Oct 2014

This has to be one of the greatest novels ever written, the whole experience was gripping and exciting.

Finished 31 Aug 2014

The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club(am breaking the rule already, I hope Tyler doesn't come after me)
This book has one of the best story telling ever, and you will never see the plot twist coming, the action never stops.
This book is a masterpiece 10 out of five
My favourite book the great gatsby had a influence on this book which made it even much more enjoyable. It's a must Read!

A classic you must read at least once before you die. I don't really need to review this because by reading this book you'll be doing your self a favour because this book is a masterpiece