What Money Can't Buy

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?

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. His work has been translated into 15 languages and has 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.