The book is about the concept of gift and other economic transfers. The starting point is a critique of the well-known Essay on the gift of Marcel Mauss. It’s aim is to show that there were many misconceptions in social anthropology about what gift really is and that the importance of this practice has currently been overestimated in French and English anthropology. It starts with a precise definition of what is to be conceived by gift, as opposed to exchange and a third kind of transaction, the prototype of which is tax. It includes up to date and critical views on the Potlatch and the Kula, which are major topics in the discipline when considering gift and counter-gift.