The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World

David Graeber

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English

Penguin
06 November 2025

Literary essays; Sociology & anthropology; Anarchism; Political control & freedoms; Labour economics

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, 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 Dubrovksy and with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, make for essential and inspiring reading. They are a profound reminder of Graeber's enduring significance as an iconic, playful, necessary thinker.

By: David Graeber
Imprint: Penguin
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 283g
ISBN: 9781802061604
ISBN 10: 1802061606
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 06 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of, among others, The Dawn of Everything- A New History of Humanity, Debt- The First 5,000 Years, Bullshit Jobs- A Theory, and Pirate Enlightenment, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, the Guardian, and the Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts helped to make Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on 2 September 2020.

Reviews for The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World

David Graeber has always been an inspiration to me. Reading him fills me with both hope and joy... The tools he has shared to help all of us deconstruct the current reality we inhabit are invaluable. The more people that we can reach the more chance of a reimagined world is possible * Clive Lewis MP * Ambitious and erudite essays... An ideal entry point to new readers... for those returning to his ideas, the pleasure is in the writing, filled as it is with historical heft, global prescience, and a vast breadth of reference by the seemingly omniscient author... Graeber’s essays remain intense flares of thought lighting a path towards something better than “the best of all possible worlds”, which is a place where we all too readily resign ourselves -- NJ McGarrigle * Irish Times *