How did anti-capitalist revolution fare in the twentieth century? John Holloway says it failed. The influential theorist and author believes we need to rethink revolution; we need to break the logic of capital in a different and distinctive way. Holloway believes that capitalism can be brought down only by the proliferation of "cracks," spaces in which people move "in the opposite direction."

Has money always been used for buying things? Were debt crises in the ancient world addressed in the same way they are now? What does honor and patriarchy have to do with debt? And what should we know about the origins of our cherished modern conceptions of liberty and property? David Graeber considers the tumultuous present in light of the past.

At the heart of the global economy, a regime dominated by lending and finance, is a symbol we call money. What does this say about who we are and how we work, and what ethical judgments can and should be made about money, wage labor, and capital investment? David Hawkes draws connections among money, human labor-time, usury, and other cultures' beliefs in magic.

The subprime mortgage meltdown and the battle over the debt ceiling have highlighted the centrality of borrowing in our economy. Yet David Graeber argues that our understanding of debt obscures more than it reveals. The acclaimed anthropologist and anarchist discusses the forms that money has taken throughout history, including the turn following Nixon's delinking of the dollar from the gold standard. He also considers the central connection between debt and empire.

Mike Daisey has traveled to faraway islands and sprawling Chinese factories, and he's used what he learned there to craft two monologues about materialism, the meaning of money, what he calls the religion of finance, and the human cost of our love affair with electronic gadgetry. Also, Stephanie Rearick describes a system of alternative currency called TimeBanking.