The new bestseller from the acclaimed author of Justice and one of the world’s most popular philosophers

“Astute, insightful, and empathetic…A crucial book for this moment” Tara Westover, author of Educated

These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favour of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the promise that “you can make it if you try”. And the consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fuelled populist protest, with the triumph of Brexit and election of Donald Trump.

Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the polarized politics of our time, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalisation and rising inequality. Sandel highlights the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success – more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility, and more hospitable to a politics of the common good.

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.