I ended up leaving this book about 2/3’rds of the way through for the sake of just.. depressing content. The first half of the book is centered around describing ‘what’ and ‘why’ particular jobs and roles fall into the “BS” category — this is all fine and well. One does need to define the class of thing they’re talking about after-all. But instead of moving in any sort of positive direction thereafter, or possibly suggesting advice to those who may be caught in those roles, the book instead shifts to a much more macro approach. Less of a ‘practical advice’ take and far more of a “look how modern capitalism did this”, and/or “modern politics is the culprit here” take. Which is fine, but not really what I was looking for.

My suspicion and understanding after seeing some other folks’ reviews is that David Graeber tends to be a little more on the macro-polarizing side of opinions than the micro-/personal-advice side. Wouldn’t say he’s my favorite author 😉