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THE Christmas present to not-so-subtly shame the people who've wronged you during the last year! :-) Jokes aside, Harvard professor and moral philosopher Sandel does an excellent job discussing ethical decision-making. Offering different perspectives and illustrating different viewpoints depending on what premises decisions are based on, he always remains engaging by giving examples and directly questioning the reader (granted, the book is based on university lectures, but don't we all know plenty of lectures that are more or less monologues?).

From Aristotle to John Rawls, Immanuel Kant and many others, Sandel takes schools of thought and concepts that at first might seem abstract and applies them to practical questions - and while some of them might be answered quite easily (is it okay to raise prices for home repairs after a severe storm?), others seem unanswerable (is it okay to kill one innocent person to save a greater number of innocent people?).

Will Sandel provide us with a general guideline for moral behavior? Oh no, we have to go on thinking for ourselves when we face moral challenges. But he inspires new ways of thinking, and that's already quite an achievement.

You can also watch Sandel's lectures on justice .