What Money Can't Buy

Oct 30, 2024 1:21 PM

Author:Michael J. Sandel

What Money Can't Buy is the Top Ten Sunday Times Bestseller from 'the superstar philosopher', Michael Sandel

Should we financially reward children for good marks? Is it ethical to pay people to donate organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons or selling citizenship?

In recent decades, market values have impinged on almost every aspect of life - medicine, education, government, law, even family life. We have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In What Money Can't Buy Michael Sandel asks: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? And how do we protect the things that really matter?

'Brilliant, easily readable, beautifully delivered and often funny ... an indispensable book' David Aaronovitch, The Times

'In a culture mesmerised by the market, Sandel's is the indispensable voice of reason' John Gray, New Statesman

'Provocative and intellectually suggestive ... little less than a wake-up call' Rowan Williams, Prospect

'A star philosopher ... entertaining and provocative' Diane Coyle, Independent

'Let's hope that What Money Can't Buy, by being so patient and accumulative in its argument and examples, marks a permanent shift in these debates' John Lanchester, Guardian

Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University. His legendary 'Justice' course is the first Harvard course made freely available online (www.JusticeHarvard.org) and on television. Hiss work has been translated into 15 languages and been the subject of television series in the U.K., the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and the Middle East. He has delivered the Tanner Lectures at Oxford and been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, Paris. In 2010, China Newsweek named him the "most influential foreign figure of the year" in China. Sandel was the 2009 BBC Reith Lecturer, and his most recent book Justice is an international bestseller.

Reviews

One of the most popular teachers in the world

—— Observer

Sandel is touching something deep in both Boston and Beijing

—— Thomas Friedman , New York Times

The most influential foreign figure of the year

—— China's Newsweek

Few philosophers are compared to rock stars or TV celebrities, but that's the kind of popularity Michael Sandel enjoys in Japan

—— Japan Times

One of the world's most interesting political philosophers

—— Guardian

What Money Can't Buy selected by the Guardian as a literary highlight for 2012

—— Guardian

America's best-known contemporary political philosopher ... the most famous professor in the world right now... the man is an academic rock star [but] instead of making it all serious and formidable, Sandel makes it light and easy to grasp

—— Mitu Jayashankar , Forbes India

An exquisitely reasoned, skillfully written treatise on big issues of everyday life

—— Kirkus Reviews

Sandel is probably the world's most relevant living philosopher

—— Michael Fitzgerald , Newsweek

Mr Sandel is pointing out [a] quite profound change in society

—— Jonathan V Last , Wall Street Journal

Provocative and intellectually suggestive ... amply researched and presented with exemplary clarity, [it] is weighty indeed - little less than a wake-up call to recognise our desperate need to rediscover some intelligible way of talking about humanity

—— Rowan Williams , Prospect

Brilliant, easily readable, beautifully delivered and often funny ... an indispensable book

—— David Aaronovitch , Times

Entertaining and provocative

—— Diane Coyle , Independent

Poring through Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel's new book ... I found myself over and over again turning pages and saying, "I had no idea." I had no idea that in the year 2000 ... "a Russian rocket emblazoned with a giant Pizza Hut logo carried advertising into outer space," or that in 2001, the British novelist Fay Weldon wrote a book commissioned by the jewelry company Bulgari ... I knew that stadiums are now named for corporations, but had no idea that now "even sliding into home is a corporate-sponsored event" ... I had no idea that in 2001 an elementary school in New Jersey became America's first public school "to sell naming rights to a corporate sponsor"

—— Thomas Friedman , New York Times

A vivid illustration ... Let's hope that What Money Can't Buy, by being so patient and so accumulative in its argument and its examples, marks a permanent shift in these debates

—— John Lanchester , Guardian

In a culture mesmerised by the market, Sandel's is the indispensable voice of reason ... if we ... bring basic values into political life in the way that Sandel suggests, at least we won't be stuck with the dreary market orthodoxies that he has so elegantly demolished

—— John Gray , New Statesman

What Money Can't Buy is replete with examples of what money can, in fact, buy ... Sandel has a genius for showing why such changes are deeply important

—— Martin Sandbu , Financial Times

Michael Sandel ... is currently the most effective communicator of ideas in English

—— Guardian

Sandel, the most famous teacher of philosophy in the world, has shown that it is possible to take philosophy into the public square without insulting the public's intelligence

—— Michael Ignatieff , New Republic

A book that can persuade people that the rules of the economy don't just reflect our values, they help to determine them

—— Ed Miliband , New Statesman

Fascinating exploration of the alarming encroachment of market philosophy on so many aspects of our lives

—— Alexander McCall Smith , The Herald

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