Debt

In Debt, David Graeber managed to condense 5,000 years of economic history into a single conceptual framework: “Understand debt and what drives it, and you’ll understand much of human history”. One detour that Graeber interestingly takes is viewing patriarchy as an important underlying current in ancient (and modern) debt repayment strategies. Also intriguingly, Graeber finds that the frequent occurrence of the term “debt” in many ancient religious texts may have accelerated adoption of debt in economic circles as well. Put simply, Debt offers a useful framework for better understanding human behavior over long time frames.