In Praise of Question Marks. On the occasion of Hana Librová’s eightieth birthday

Karel Stibral, Vojtěch pelikán (eds.)

The book you are holding is a tribute to Professor Hana Librová on the occasion of her 80th birthday. The chapters have been written by her colleagues from the Department of Environmental Studies and other related departments, as well as by her friends from the environmental movement. Each of the co-authors has attempted to build on Hana Librová’s work – some have directly engaged in polemical discussions with it, others have taken it as an opportunity to reflect on a topic they have long been involved in. All of the authors wanted to try to imitate Hana Librová’s style in such a way that the resulting texts would be accessible to readers outside the academic community, while maintaining a scientific rigour when pursuing this goal.

Readers can look forward to nine partial studies that thematically relate to different aspects of Hana Librová’s work. Some of the chapters turn their attention to the themes of her earlier historical-cultural texts looking at the landscape. Elsewhere, authors have drawn from the rich store of her journalistic articles. Others have followed on from research into lifestyles or have broadened the field of vision to include systemic, especially economic and political, issues. Taken as a whole, the book shows that any evaluation of Hana Librová’s lifetime work certainly does not have to be based on referring to the past. The book can be seen as proof of the immense inspiration that Hana Librová’s intellectual achievements have provided – and which will certainly continue to do so in the future.

Book preview