Graeber revisits questions raised in his earlier book, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. These twelve essays cover a lot of ground: the origins of capitalism, the history of European table manners, love potions and gender in rural Madagascar, the phenomenology of giant puppets at street protests, etc. They're linked by a clear purpose: to explore the nature of social power and the forms that resistance to it have taken--or might take in the future.