>I'm going to try reading it again, but the first time didn't go well..

All history is viewed through the eyes of the author's politics. I accept that, and set my personal politics aside and considered his history. One of the major positives of this book is its ambitious scope. The narrative spans millenia of history and I respect that ambition.

I don't agree with everything Graeber says but he proposes new ideas (to me at least). Those new ideas are fun to consider and think about.

I agree completely with your first sentence. I feel like when reading history, though, there is what happened, and there is the story about what happened. Sometimes it's basically impossible to have one without the other, but sometimes it's not, and I think what's compelling about Graeber is the story he tells about debt, but it didn't feel to me like he tried very hard to disentangle his facts from how he felt about them. But like I said, I do need to read the book again.