Selection from the forthcoming books

Michal Hrubý, Dušana Augustovičová

Title in Engllish: Karate Coach Manual. Competition guideline not only for coaches

The Karate Coach Manual is a comprehensive methodological guide designed for karate coaches of all performance levels, combining scientific knowledge, practical experience, and the current competition rules of the WKF (World Karate Federation). The document serves as a complete guide to coaching practice – from theoretical foundations of sport coaching to the organizational, psychological, technical-tactical, and ethical aspects of a coach’s work.
The publication offers a modern, well-structured, and practice-oriented resource that systematically supports the professional development of karate coaches and strengthens their ability to lead athletes in accordance with current standards of performance, safety, and ethics.

To be published in January 2026

Eva Kuminková

Title in Engllish: Traditions – Transformations – Identity. Folk costume and dance in Wallachia as a source of inspiration

The ethnologist Eva Kuminková in her publication contributes to transdisciplinary discussion on evolution and transformations of folk culture. She focuses on processes, which despite all kinds of obstacles, historical and political twists, cultural and social changes allowed different elements of folk culture survive all the way to the 21st century. She uses folk costume and male dance odzemek from the ethnographic region of Wallachia in context of their development since the 19th century as case studies. The author strives to analyse the significance of these two elements in the process of formation of local and regional identity. She also studies the role of people, who are custodians of contemporary traditions, institutions and individuals, who have been contributing to understanding, safeguarding and transmission of this cultural heritage. In her conclusion she formulates universal preconditions which allow the above mentioned processes and explains to what extend folk culture can serve as a source of collective and personal identity of an individual.

To be published in December 2025

Jan Reichstäter

The book offers analytical insights into the pre-Christian religions of the northern Indo-Europeans, meaning the Celtic, Germanic and Baltic peoples. In three thematic chapters, the author presents, through the perspectives of archaeology, philology, and ethnology, a critical synthesis of current knowledge about the pantheons, rituals, and mythologies that once formed the ‘pillars’ of these religious cultures. In addition to the possibilities of reconstructing these systems, rejected by their adherents in late antiquity or in the Middle Ages with the adoption of Christianity, he attentively addresses the ambiguities, complexities, and challenges of interpreting their particular structures or elements. Through this balanced combination of logical constructivism and critical deconstruction, the book provides the reader with credible outlines of the archaic traditions that influenced – as a substratum legacy – not only Western Christianity, but also the subsequent secularised cultures of northern Europe.

To be published in December 2025