The theme of the gift can be located at the centre of current discussions of deconstruction, gender and feminist theory, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, and economics. This text presents essays on gifts and gift-giving.

Introduction: Why Gift?; One: Documents; One: Gifts; One: Gift, Gift; One: Gift and Exchange in the Indo-European Vocabulary; Two: Readings of Mauss; Two: Selections from Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss; Two: The Spirit of the Gift; Two: Heliocentric Exchange; Three: French Re-Appraisals; Three: The Time of the King; Three: Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays; Three: Women on the Market; Three: Selections from The Logic of Practice; Three: Marginalia—Some Additional Notes on the Gift; Four: Anglo-American Interventions; Four: Bataille, Gift Giving, and the Cold War; Four: What Goes Around Comes Around: Derrida and Levinas on the Economy of the Gift and the Gift of Genealogy; Four: The Metaphysics of Presents: Nietzsche's Gift, the Debt to Emerson, Heidegger's Values; Four: Partners and Consumers: Making Relations Visible