Painstakingly researched and sensitively composed, David Graeber’s latest book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, attempts a retelling of world history in which credit systems underpin the rise—and potential decline—of human civilization.

What was once an unquestioned right is fast becoming a privilege: the United States now has a laboring class—or, to use a more appropriate term that we all wish obsolete, a caste—that is institutionally deprived of civil and political rights in order to raise the profitability of U.S. firms.

About a year ago, people began sending me a David Letterman clip in which Steve Martin, who also plays banjo, performs a bluegrass tune alongside world-famous Béla Fleck and a guitarist named Michael Daves, who I had never heard of. Daves looked odd next to his sleekly dressed stage partners.