This is the first volume that examines dangerous gift-giving across centuries and disciplines. Bringing to the fore the subject that features as an aside in gift studies, it offers new insights into the ambivalent and troubled history of gift-giving.

Alexandra Urakova is a Kone Foundation fellow at Tampere University and holds the title of docent in North-American Studies at the University of Helsinki.

Tracey A. Sowerby is a Research Associate at St Benet's Hall, Oxford and the Director of the Europaeum Scholars Programme.

Tudor Sala has been awarded postdoctoral fellowships from the Leibniz Association/DAAD, the Dahlem Research School/COFUND, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study at the Central European University.

Introduction: Unpacking the Dangerous Gift Part 1: Gifts Divine, Demonic, and Devout 1. Demonic Gifts and Counter-gifts in Ancient Zoroastrianism 2. Blessings, Bribes and Bishops: Cyril of Alexandria, the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Making of Orthodoxy 3. 'The most precious of all gifts': Sentimentality, Consumption, and The Gift of Death in Warner, Phelps, and Twain Part 2:The Precarious Politics of the Gift 4. The Dangerous Gift as Diplomatic Tool: Relics and Cross-confessional Gift-giving at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century 5. A Pandora's Box of National Hostility?: The Széchényis and Aristocratic Donations in Nineteenth Century East-Central Europe 6. The Dangerous Gift of Universal Income: The Problem of Rentier Dependency in Venezuela Part 3: The Dark Side of the Gift Economy 7. Taking Aim at 'Exchange Gifts' and the 'Christmas Tax': Dangerous Gifts in the Progressive Era and the Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving 8. The Dual Dangers of the Gift 9. The Birthday Cake: Commodity, Thing, Object, and Token. Afterword: Gifts, Dangers and Their Performative Context