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In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the Weimar Republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive possessions such as cigars, artworks and jewels were routinely exchanged for everyday necessities such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal, and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. In desperation, the Bavarian Prime Minister submitted a Bill to the Reichsrat proposing that gluttony be made a penal offence. Since its first publication in 1975, When Money Dies has become the classic history of these bizarre and frightening times. Combining excellent analysis with numerous eyewitness accounts by ordinary people struggling to survive, it deals ultimately with the human side of inflation: why governments resort to it, the dismal, corruptive pestilence it visits on their citizens, the agonies of recovery, and the dark, long-term legacy. And at a time of acute economic strain, it provides an urgent warning against the addictive dangers of printing money - shorthand for deficit financing - as a soft option for governments faced with growing unrest and unemployment.

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.