La Confianza (Confidence)

Author: Albert Jovell holds a PhD in Medicine and Surgery, and in Sociology and Political Sciences. He is specialised in Preventive Medicine and Public Health, and received his MD and PhD degrees in Public Health from Harvard University.  He is president of the Spanish Forum of Patients, director of the UAB-University of Patients project and associate lecturer at the UAB Faculty of Medicine.

Summary: In his book La confianza. En su ausencia, no somos nadie (Confidence. In its absence, we are no one), confidence appears as an emotional and rational need which allows us to establish social relations and which identifies the values of people, organisations and governments. This book offers different strategies to promote it.

Publisher: Plataforma Editorial Year of issue: 2008

Biodiversidad (Biodiversity)

Author: Martí Boada is an expert in environmental subjects and author of several books on these issues. Researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and professor at UAB, he has been awarded with the Spanish National Prize in Environment.

Francisco Javier Gómez is a researcher in environmental sciences and received his master's degree in this discipline from the UAB. His works focus in the socioecological analysis of Mediterranean forests and the biodiversity of urban environments.

Summary: Biodiversity has turned into an excellent component of environmental calibration, an indicator to quantify the environmental crisis. Biodiversidad (Biodiversity) breaks away from anti-urban formulations: the city and its biodiversity appear in this work as a space in which the sustainability of future models will be resolved.

Publisher: Rubes Year of issue: 2008

Pequeñas Grandes Cosas (Little Big Things)

Author: Albert Figueras is a doctor specialised in promoting a rational use of medicines, especially in Latin America. He works at the Catalan Institute of Pharmacology and has been a consultant in topics related to the use of medicines of the WHO, the OPS and the World Bank. He is also a UAB lecturer.

Summary: Medicine has long used the effect of placebos to relieve different physical ailments. Why should placebos not be used to treat the ailments of the soul as well? In Pequeñas Grandes Cosas (Little Big Things), Albert Figueras examines the different types of placebos that can cure, speaks about their scientific bases and offers guidelines so that everyone can identify their own placebos, since they are the key to our well-being.

Publisher: Plataforma Year of issue: 2008

Primates y filósofos

Author: Frans de Waal is C. H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology and director of the Living Links Center of Yerkes Primates National Center, both belonging to Emory University  (Atlanta, USA). He is considered one the most excellent figures in primatology and ethology, especially in the study of the social intelligence of primates such as chimpanzees, bonobos and macacos.

Summary: Based on his research, the author explains how we come from a long line of animals that care for the weak and build cooperation with reciprocal transactions. In his opinion, these actions demonstrate that a strong continuity exists between human and animal behaviour.

Publisher: Paidós Year of issue: 2007