A review by lumpyplume
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

5.0

I don't know which backstory was most exciting personally, but it was either (a) Graeber's musings on medieval Irish economies (people generally did not use markets for necessities, furniture, etc., yet there was an elaborate system for fines for minor slights to dignity), or (b) the discussion of how middle kingdom polities in China were anti-capitalist, and the Buddhist monks on the outskirts were pro-capitalist and pro-market and drove farmworkers into debt bondage.