What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (Paperback)

One of the most popular teachers in the world Sandel is touching something deep in both Boston and Beijing The most influential foreign figure of the year Few philosophers are compared to rock stars or TV celebrities, but that's the kind of popularity Michael Sandel enjoys in Japan One of the world's most interesting political philosophers What Money Can't Buy selected by the Guardian as a literary highlight for 2012 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 An exquisitely reasoned, skillfully written treatise on big issues of everyday life Sandel is probably the world's most relevant living philosopher Mr Sandel is pointing out [a] quite profound change in society 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 Brilliant, easily readable, beautifully delivered and often funny ... an indispensable book Entertaining and provocative 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" 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 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 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 Michael Sandel ... is currently the most effective communicator of ideas in English 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 A book that can persuade people that the rules of the economy don't just reflect our values, they help to determine them Fascinating exploration of the alarming encroachment of market philosophy on so many aspects of our lives