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There's an obvious reason why geoists (or Georgists) look at Henry George's Progress and Poverty as a great introductory text on the subject. It's a fantastic piece of work, weaving Ricardian economics, J.S. Mill's philosophy, and Proudhon's criticism of private property into a synthesis that fits neither "left" or "liberal" politics, but nevertheless produces a policy prescription that seems completely realistic. Henry George's language is powerful and convincing.

Progress and Poverty is also 900 pages long, written in increasingly stuffy-sounding 19th century English.

This book seems like it would be a good alternative for those who might be scared off by a big heavy tome. It also relegates mentions of Henry George to the footnotes, which I think is the right choice; history has mostly forgotten (or erased) him, so his arguments have to stand on their own merits now. Adams updates the text with some recent insights, introduces the terminology "community land contribution" over "land value tax", doesn't shy away from discussing negative implications such a policy might have (any fairly simplistic policy prescription will have two sides). His prose doesn't rise to the extatic level of Henry George, and I think this is a good thing.

I like it. At the same time, this is still a niche book for people with a fairly high reading level. To truly reach people, I think the language could be simplified more. The calls to higher morality could be toned down. The examples could be simplified with diagrams, illustrations, etc.

The people who can read this book are also capable of reading P&P.

Supposedly, News from Nowhere was written as a reaction to Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy. Instead of a rigidly industrialized, militaristic society, Morris's future is decentralized, centered around artisans, and the people have developed a healthy skepticism against the rule of one man over the other.

In his future, modernity has been tried and found wanting, and most of the novel is spent conveying the complete lack of interest people in Morris's future Britain have against progress and technology.

The novel is still heavy on exposition. Strangely enough, it gets most exciting and realistic when the dark history of the future is revealed; the revolution, the unfortunate suppression of revolutionary sentiment, etc.

For a moment, I was worried that Morris, like Bellamy and Smith, was going to introduce an immature romance into the story; a beautiful woman, predisposed to fall hopelessly in love with the stranger from another time. However, Morris carefully steers the story away from this, handling it with a lot more taste than either of the other writers.

The most astonishing thing about this novel is that it apparently inspired hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Even in the Netherlands, until WWII, the Bellamist association counted some 30.000 people in its ranks.

And I suppose this is because it's socialism for the conservative; it doesn't question religion, social hierarchy, or anything about human relations. Instead, it formalizes the existing hierarchical structures of society into a giant military apparatus that provides for everyone.

Supposedly it was very popular in Russia as well, before the 1918 revolution. It figures, you'll find preciously little about how to construct a socialist state in Marx. Bellamy, however, sketches a very clear design of a centralized, planned economy much like the Bolshewiks tried to construct.

This is a novel about Bellamy's dream society, and the plot is minimal. "Show, don't tell" was not one of the writer's guidelines, and most of the exposition is through dialogue.

Much like L Neil Smith's The Probability Broach, the main character is mostly expresses uncritical awe of the new society he finds himself in.

Julian West wakes up to find that everyone he knows, his supposedly extended circle of friends, not to mention his fiancé, have been dead for almost a century. Most people would find such a realization depressing, but not a word is wasted on any sense of loss or mourning.

And there's a ready-made romance angle that is so similar to the one in the Probability Broach that it makes me wonder if Smith's version wasn't an explicit nod to Bellamy.

In summary, it's mostly surprising that a novel this bad could inspire so many.

Multiple people I respected recommend this book, so I thought I'd look at it. The title is a clever sales pitch, as it implies that our normal style of communication is violent, and you wouldn't want to be violent, would you?

Like most American non-fiction books, it tries to oversell itself. If you believe the author, he's not only able to solve gang violence and the Israel-Palestine conflict, but has successfully made peace with the most odious, argumentative group imaginable, software developers!

Looking past that, it touches upon truths most of us realize about communication in our teens; that statements of fact often are very effective ways to lie and manipulate.

There is a degree of over-simplification here. Marshall interprets a "violent" statement like "You're so insensitive!" as a factual assertion, when the vast majority of the population would understand this to be a subjective expression. In practice there's no miscommunication.

The non-violent version might be "The way you act around me makes me feel like you're not responsive to my needs ..." (or something even longer), in a style that brings to mind Mr. Spock and Sheldon Cooper, not creative, emotionally sensitive people.

But we teach young children to grammatically deconstruct sentences at an age when they're perfectly capable of forming them without ever learning what a verb is. To me, it makes at least as much sense to teach children to emotionally deconstruct an argument, and find the subjective statements embedded in it. It might make them more resilient towards manipulations by parents, teachers, partners and politicians.

First of all, this book is good fun to read. The author manages to imitate Heinlein's style in an uncanny way.

But I'm not the target audience; I'm not a thirteen year-old American boy raised to think of the founding fathers as unified, benign philosopher-warriors who set their country on a path to greatness. In the rest of the world, other than George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, these guys aren't particularly well known.

And I'm not nearly naive enough to fall for the Anarcho-Capitalist politics that are espoused on every page.

The main character has problems; he's a forty-eight year-old man who travels through a dimensional gap to encounter his twin who is healthier, better-looking, and more successful than he is. An author writing for adults would be able to spin just this idea into an entire novel, but instead this is mostly ignored; the main character spends his time pining for his new love interest ... more like a thirteen year-old would. And the problems don't end there. Half the time he's breathlessly conveying the technological marvels of a world without government interference. Then he turns around and acts as a strawman defending government, to be torn apart by his friends. And he's also supposed to be a cynical, Philip Marlowe-esque gumshoe.

That being said, this novel never bores. From highway shootouts in high-speed hovercraft, to talking dolphins, to cynical long-lived motormouth Lucy Kropotkin, there is plenty of fun to be had.

The politics are tolerable precisely because it's clear the author is writing an idealized history he wishes had happened; one where humans can live together without power and politics. As the novel illustrates, that is not the world we live in.

I was afraid that this was going to be a padded out version of his original essay, but I needn't have worried. Give Graeber 300 pages, and he'll give you ideas worth 600 of them. Coupled with his keen sense for observational comedy, and you get a book that's easy to read, keeps your attention, and highly entertaining.