Award winning books

Ladislav Rabušic, Petr Soukup a Petr Mareš

The authors explain how to perform statistical analysis using the SPSS program. At the same time, they present in a simple way the principles of statistics, important methodological aspects of data analysis and guide students through the options of SPSS of how to carry out the necessary calculations and outputs, both numerical and graphical. Apart from the theoretical insight, the textbook features practical advice, data files and tools for practical data analysis as well as exercises to practise the analysis. No similar textbook of data analysis in the social sciences has been published in the Czech Republic so far, it will thus be of benefit for both students and researchers in social sciences. 2nd revised edition.

• 2020 The Jaroslav Jirsa Award for the best textbook of the year
  Charles University recognises high-quality textbooks as distinctive creative scientific and educational texts. Each year, it supports authors by granting the „Jaroslav Jirsa Award“ for the best textbook of the year.

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Michal Černý

In the fifth volume we reflect on the hybrid nature of the social and work environment in which most of us normally live. The boundaries between online and offline are blur­ring, both worlds merge into one. How will the ongoing technological revolution affect our education, professional success or value orientation? According to information science, the core of the answer lies in the way we obtain, evaluate and use information.

• 2019/2020 The best books for children and adolescents
  The committee for children’s books of the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers and the Czech section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) created a project in which they recommend new Czech books for children and adolescents on a yearly basis. The catalogue serves as guidance for booksellers, librar­ies, and schools, but also for parents and the wider public. In most European countries such national catalogues are published, and it significantly helps all who work with books and with children.

• 2020 Listed in the Lidové noviny "Book of the Year" poll

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Jiří Vácha

Darwinism claims to be a complete theory of biological life, including human life. It has a significant effect on the self-concept of contemporary humans and their worldview. In his unique book, Professor Emeritus of Masaryk University, physician and philosopher Jiří Vácha summarizes the current scientific critique of Darwinism, and also expands the whole problem by the notion of "consciousness" as the most specific feature of live beings. In addition to the evolving physical aspect of organisms, their experiential aspect has evolved too, and Darwinism does not take that sufficiently into account. Modern natural science, following in the footsteps of Descartes' mechanism, has a priori closed the door to this fundamental problem and has had to make way for philosophy and its interpretation. Despite its broad scientific scope, the book is surprisingly readable, the author explains complex things in clear and simple language.

• 2020 Listed in the Lidové noviny "Book of the Year 2020" poll

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Hana Librová and her students: The Faithful and the Reasonable. Chapters on Ecological Backwardness

This book follows the successful titles “The Colourful and the Green: Chapters on Voluntary Simplicity” and “The Half-Hearted and the Hesitant: Chapters on Ecological Luxury.” The author poses the question of why, at a time of continuing devastation of nature, people’s interest in nature conservation has been decreasing. Are the media to blame or is our numbness toward ecological problems rooted in our mental makeup that tends to supress unpleasant realities? The author also wants to find out why some people have remained faithful to nature. To get to the answers, she applies sociological, philosophical, psychological, and theological perspectives. An unexpected question that may surprise some readers then becomes: Actually, why should we protect nature when it can take care of itself? It is not weak; it is strong and cruel.
Librová’s students Vojtěch Pelikán, Lucie Galčanová, and Lukáš Kala interview the children of “the Colourful,” too: have they inherited their parents’ modest lifestyle?

Those interested in the book have a unique opportunity to choose from two designs: publication with color linocuts by Miloš Sláma or with paintings by Bohdan Lacina.

• Czech Sociological Association Award for outstanding publication

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Ladislav Bařinka: Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery

This epic book celebrates the successes of professor Bařinka’s sixtyyear long career in plastic and reconstructive surgery. On almost 900 pages, it presents the long years of experience of the Brno plasticsurgery school in which the author has played a substantive role. The main asset of the publication is a huge number of meticulously compiled patients’ case histories which virtually encompass the whole discipline. The book is divided into eleven chapters organised according to individual areas of interest of the field. In selected topics (such as the auricle reconstruction or lower extremities lymphedema), the book strives for significant deepening of the readers’ knowledge. It is the most extensive monograph in the field of plastic surgery ever published in the Czech Republic.

• 2016: Josef Hlávka Award for scientific literature in medical sciences 

Lumír Jisl: The China diary

In late 1957, Czech archaeologist and art historian Lumír Jisl set off for a business trip to Mongolia and China. He was keeping a detailed personal diary throughout his six-month journey where he openly and critically captured the atmosphere of Chinese everyday life. Above all, he vividly portrayed diverse Buddhist and other temples, rock and cave sacral complexes, and other significant monuments of Chinese history. He supplemented his records with colour and black and white photographs. The manuscript of the diary was preserved along with the negatives in the family archive and could not be published until now.

Apart from the diary itself, the book contains rich visual accompaniment, several memories of Jisl’s contemporaries, and specialised religionist and sinologist studies. A detailed index, cartographic attachment, and extensive footnotes are naturally not missing.

• 2016: shortlisted for the Most beautiful Czech books award

Ivan Mrázek: Gemstones of ancient civilizations

Gemstones are masterpieces of nature, and their mysterious sparkle has fascinated man from time immemorial. The representative publication conveys the history of precious stones, as well as history as such. Gemstones on its 382 pages, in 332 photographs and 50 illustrations reveal to us the life and problems of ancient civilizations. The compelling text and extensive visual material draw readers directly into the long gone times which they discover step by step thanks to the systematic documentation of archaeological finds – artefacts made of precious stones.

The book is unique in its scope; it presents a summary of the existing knowledge about the subject. It will be of use to experts on various ancient civilizations and those interested in mineralogy and archaeology, but it will also certainly impress any lover of beauty, history and precious stones.

• 2014: Josef Hlávka Award for scientific literature
• 2013: shortlisted for the Magnesia litera Award for scientific literature
• 2013: The most beautiful book of the Autumn Book Fair in Havlíčkův Brod 

Vladimír Spousta: Music-literary dictionary

The grandiose encyclopaedic trilogy is based on the interconnection of musical, verbal, and also visual arts. It contains over two thousand entries with the personalities of composers, in whose work has music at least once met with literature – from mere documentable inspiration to setting a literary work into music. The dictionary is the result of impressive, decades-long author's work.

• 2014: The Dictionary of the year Award (2nd place)

Elena Marečková-Štolcová a kolektiv: Latinitas medica. A lexicon of (not only) medical sentences, quotations and phrases

Latinitas medica is a voluminous compendium presenting nearly 7,000 sentences, quotations, phrases, and technical terms formulated throughout centuries in Latin language. Primarily, the spheres of human health and medicine have been focused on but other natural sciences (e. g. pharmacy) and the adherent spheres of philosophy as well as religion, psychology, ethics, pedagogy, sociology and law have been integrated. The items, both the texts written by well-known authorities and anonymous pieces of folk wisdom, appear in their original (Latin) version as accompanied by their brand-new Czech translation and occasional commentaries and references. Thanks to the alphabetic order and the two comprehensive keyword catalogues (Latin and Czech) the inner structure of the comprehensive volume discussed appears lucid and the book itself proofs user-friendly.

• 2012 Jury Award in the Dictionary of the year contest (2nd place)

Marek Fencl: Cream of tartar

Marek Fencl, born in Hodonín in 1967, graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University and works in Brno as a doctor. He published his verses in the literary review Weles and in several collections of poems. His first individual collection contains 45 poems written in a free verse, full of pictures of landscape and life in Moravian Slovakia. The land there is cultivated from ancient times, among other things by the demanding cultivation of grapevine, is in itself such a vineyard of the Lord with the symbolism that belongs to it. It gives people bread not only for food, but also food for the spirit.

• 2010 Shortlisted for the Magnesia litera Award for the revelation of the year

Michal Bobek, Pavel Molek a Vojtěch Šimíček (eds.): Communist Law in Czechoslovakia. Chapters from the History of Injustice

“Communist Law in Czechoslovakia” is a unique project born out of intellectual discomfort of the editors of this collective volume. The discomfort was caused by what was perceived as a lack of as good as any critical analysis of what communist law was and how it still considerably shapes the law in contemporary Czech Republic and Slovakia. The collective volume has the ambition of launching the long needed debate on this subject.

• 2009 The European Academy for Democracy Award for the most valuable book in political studies

Iva Stuchlíková, Tomáš Janík a kol.: Field Didactics: Development – State of the art – Perspectives

Field didactics are scientific disciplines that focus on the domain-specific dimension of teaching and learning in and outside the school environment. They deal with a range of issues, from defining and justifying the aims of teaching and learning in the specific field/subject to legitimation and didactic transformation of content and to methodical structuring of learning processes. A general issue in the Czech educational system is the fact that field didactics have not been systematically developed with adequate demand for a long period of time. Despite this, they have grown into relatively independent scientific disciplines (as evident in this book). The publication aims to give an overview of the development and state of the art of field didactics in the Czech Republic and discuss the prospects for their future.

• 2015 Rector of the University of South Bohemia's Award for popularizing/overview book
• 2016 Czech Association for pedagogical research Award for outstanding research book 

Martin Flašar: Poème électronique. 1958. Le Corbusier – E. Varèse – I. Xenakis

“Poème électronique” was one of the first comprehensive multimedia works, which consistently used the handling of audio material in architectural space. This work was prepared by a trio of artists Le Corbusier, Edgard Varèse and Iannis Xenakis for the presentation of the Philips company at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958. Poème électronique is used in this book as a comprehensive term for a set of artistic acts associated with the Philips pavillion. A particular emphasis is placed on the personality of the solitaire and pioneer of electroacoustic music, Edgard Varèse. The present publication attempts to trace the lines of the development of the three main protagonists intersecting an interpretive framework designed by the aesthetics of contemporary art groups and movements.

• 2012 shortlisted for the F. X. Šalda Award