"One of today's most accomplished students of the common law examines the nature of promises and the grounds of their binding force.The book deserves attention not only because it offers a radical reinterpretation of promising. It also raises wider and more important questions. Most obviously it makes the reader rethink his attitude towards the possible cross-fertilization of legal study and philosophy. But beyond that it raises the often neglected problem of the relation between the law and social institutions independent of it."--Joseph Raz, Harvard Law Review "Anyone interested in the moral significance of promising will benefit from Atiyah's sophisticated renewal of the attack on the utilitarian account of promises and a critical evaluation of his own theory."-- Michigan Law Review.