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by karatestomp 2322 days ago
A lot of the negative Amazon reviews, at least, comprise complaints that Graeber doesn't address or defend points that he actually does, usually a paragraph or two after they're raised. They don't claim the points are poorly defended or explained, but that they're not, when they 100% for sure are.

The book's very well-constructed that way, actually—make assertions that the thinking reader will have objections to or questions about, proceed to directly call out and address same in following paragraphs—but apparently some people's eyes go so red on reading something they don't immediately agree with that they totally miss the explanation and defense that follows. In short, many of them accuse the book of specific sins it did not commit. Others don't provide enough specific criticism to be analyzable, usually accusing it of the same sorts of problems but without enough details to tell whether the reviewer's just a bad reader like a lot of the other people dumping on it.

Possibly there are good negative reviews out there, but a good percentage of them seem to be folks who are, bluntly, not literate enough to read the book—though it's far from a challenging read.