AS A COMPILATION of the late David Graeber’s work, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . . has several tasks, each of which it executes more fully than one might expect from a posthumous odds and sods collection. Capturing what this rogue anthropologist thought and how he thought is not that easy, as he occupied an uneasy kind of pole position in both academia and activism, where he was referenced as much as he was resented. This book shows the breadth of Graeber’s subjects of engagement—from anarchist pirates to hunter-gatherers—and his core strength, which was also an impediment: a dogged interest in root causes and a voracious need to help effect material change, both of which revved him up way past the safe operating speeds of academic research. Who else but a reckless omnivore would dare write (with David Wengrow) a book called The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity? As to whether this variety of omnivore is what people, or the American left, needs, the jury is very much out. Me? I side with the reckless while noting that I have more often consulted Marxists like Stuart Hall or Mike Davis, who scan the world at a slower pace. But it might be Graeber whose agitations put me in mind to do the consulting in the first place. {read}