
The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . .
Essays
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Narrated by:
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Jacques Servin
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Savitri D
About this listen
Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews.
"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as Debt and the breakout New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengrow), Graeber was as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes.
There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past. Thinking against the grain, Graeber was one of the few who dared to imagine a new understanding of the past and a liberatory vision of the future—to imagine a social order based on humans’ fundamental freedom. In essays published over three decades and ranging across the biggest issues of our time— inequality, technology, the identity of “the West,” democracy, art, power, anger, mutual aid, and protest—he challenges the old assumptions about political life. A trenchant critic of the order of things, and driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to human freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different.
During a moment of daunting upheaval and pervasive despair, the incisive, entertaining, and urgent essays collected in The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . . , edited and with an introduction by Nika Dubrovsky and with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, make for essential and inspiring listening. They are a profound reminder of Graeber’s enduring significance as an iconic, playful, necessary thinker.
©2024 David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
From the perspective of Western modernity, humanity inhabits a disenchanted cosmos. Yet the vast majority of cultures throughout human history treat spirits as very real persons, members of a cosmic society who interact with humans and control their fate. In most cultures, even today, people are but a small part of an enchanted universe misconstrued by the transcendent categories of "religion" and the "supernatural." The New Science of the Enchanted Universe shows how anthropologists and other social scientists must rethink these cultures of immanence and study them by their own lights.
By: Marshall Sahlins
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Capitalist Realism
- Is There No Alternative?
- By: Mark Fisher
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 4 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system–a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework.
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Mind-blowing
- By John Erlandsen on 10-04-24
By: Mark Fisher
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Vulture Capitalism
- Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
- By: Grace Blakeley
- Narrated by: Grace Blakeley
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s easy to look at the state of the world around us and feel hopeless. We live in an era marked by war, climate crisis, political polarization, and acute inequality—and yet many of us feel powerless to do anything about these profound issues. We’ve been assured that unfettered capitalism is necessary to ensure our freedom and prosperity but why, in our age of unchecked corporate power, are most of us living paycheck to paycheck? When the economy falters, why do governments bail out corporations and shareholders but leave everyday people in the dust?
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A relentless and clear critique of capitalism's hijinks
- By Swirley Jr on 07-09-25
By: Grace Blakeley
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Why Marx Was Right
- 2nd Edition
- By: Terry Eagleton
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking 10 of the most common objections to Marxism - that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on - he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's own thought these assumptions are.
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A Brilliant Narrator
- By Stephen on 08-11-18
By: Terry Eagleton
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Weapons of the Weak
- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Alex Boyles
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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This sensitive picture of the constant and circumspect struggle waged by peasants materially and ideologically against their oppressors shows that techniques of evasion and resistance may represent the most significant and effective means of class struggle in the long run.
By: James C. Scott
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Jacques Lacan
- The Basics
- By: Calum Neill
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Jacques Lacan: The Basics provides a clear and succinct introduction to the work of Jacques Lacan, one of the key thinkers of the twentieth century.
By: Calum Neill
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Heaven in Disorder
- By: Slavoj Zizek
- Narrated by: Will Tulin
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.
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Great book with very interesting political analysis
- By Nicholas on 01-21-22
By: Slavoj Zizek
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Invisible Doctrine
- The Secret History of Neoliberalism
- By: George Monbiot, Peter Hutchison
- Narrated by: George Monbiot
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In Invisible Doctrine, journalist George Monbiot and filmmaker Peter Hutchison shatter this myth. They show how a fringe philosophy in the 1930s—championing competition as the defining feature of humankind—was systematically hijacked by a group of wealthy elites, determined to guard their fortunes and power.
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Timely
- By Joshua on 05-15-25
By: George Monbiot, and others
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Like a Thief in Broad Daylight
- Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism
- By: Slavoj Žižek
- Narrated by: Jamie East
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Urgent as ever, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight illuminates the new dangers as well as the radical possibilities thrown up by today's technological and scientific advances and their electrifying implications for us all.
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Its great but
- By Cody Edwards on 06-26-20
By: Slavoj Žižek
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Technofeudalism
- What Killed Capitalism
- By: Yanis Varoufakis
- Narrated by: Yanis Varoufakis
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Technofeudalism says Yanis Varoufakis, is the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world, and is the greatest current threat to the liberal individual, to our efforts to avert climate catastrophe—and to democracy itself. It also lies behind the new geopolitical tensions, especially the New Cold War between the United States and China. Drawing on stories from Greek myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power, and, ultimately, what it will take overthrow it.
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The narration is literally the worst.
- By Shakeiad on 09-24-24
By: Yanis Varoufakis
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The Invention of Good and Evil
- A World History of Morality
- By: Hanno Sauer
- Narrated by: Callum Coates
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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What makes us moral beings? How do we decide what is good and what is evil? And has it always been that way? Hanno Sauer's sweeping new history of humanity, covering five million years of our universal moral values, comes at a crucial moment of crisis for those values, and helps to explain how they arose—and why we need them. Modern societies are in crisis: a shared universal morality seems to be a thing of the past. Hanno Sauer explains why this appearance is deceptive: in fact, there are universal values that all people share.
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Was good until author got political
- By c0stab on 03-01-25
By: Hanno Sauer
Hilarious and thought provoking
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You know you’ll like this
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An important read
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