The winners of the 7th competition of Smart Book of the Year 2021, organized by the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the SmartBooks portal have been announced. The main prize – the title of the Smart Book of the Year 2021 – was awarded to “Planet of viruses. Do viruses control life on Earth?” by Carl Zimmer. The jury recognized Monika Utnik-Strugała’s “Dirt. Smelly Hygiene Story” as the best book for children and adolescents.

The Smart Book of the Year competition aims to motivate publishers and authors to care for the highest level of popular science published in Polish.

In the competition, the winner was also selected by the academic community of the Jagiellonian University. In the online voting, the most votes were received by the last book by Jacques Le Goff, written a year before his death, “Do you really have to divide history into epochs?”.