Daily Journal:

When this prize was conceived, the phrase “Russian scientific pop” was something of an oxymoron. The award was created from scratch. There was a dream to make waves, stimulate the market, encourage authors to write books. It is not clear what happened - whether we really stirred up something, or simply guessed the moment, but scientific pop, in comparison with what it was, has become very popular, there are more and more books.

There are four books in the humanitarian category, two of which are written directly about Russia, and two more about Japan and Byzantium, but they have almost more to do with Russia than the first two. The winning book about Japan tells the story of how the Japanese nation arose sixty years before the “Japanese miracle,” which was the main prerequisite for the “Japanese miracle.” The book is written, on the one hand, excitingly, on the other hand, very skillfully and efficiently, and we see how a nation crystallizes from an amorphous state. This is very interesting to read for today's Russian. A book about Constantinople is a book about a city that no longer exists; the word “guide” in the title is somewhat playful. This is in its own way an analogue of Yakov Perelman’s book “Entertaining Physics”, written by a humanist. The author says: “Take this book, go to that city that no longer exists, go before it’s too late, before everything is destroyed, and look with me for what I was looking for, maybe you’ll find more than I did.” . This is an exploration that the reader makes together with the author, looking over his shoulder. What a wonderful publicity stunt. And, of course, Russians are interested in reading about Byzantium, because all over the world it is believed that Russian civilization has Byzantine roots.

It was difficult to choose one of the four science books. I would especially like to note the personality of the laureate. This is a tireless, rabid popularizer and lecturer who lectures to monks in the seminary, being an atheist, to five-year-old children at a book festival, writes an endless number of popular science books, and messes with students. After reading his books, people become astronomers. In his speech today, the author said that he dreams that his students, in turn, will write popular science books and demolish him from Olympus.

It should be noted that all our activities within the framework of “Enlightener” bring a rich harvest of very different kinds. For example, there are books that were not included in the shortlist, but their authors are very interesting lecturers and popularizers, they generously share their time and, at our request, travel to cities and villages and give lectures. There are books that are not given a prize and should not be given - for example, the piercing memoir of St. Petersburg entomologist Vitaly Tanaseichuk, who first describes with deadly realism his childhood in exile during the war years, when he almost died of hunger, and then introduces us to a man with a net and a test tube, which has been walking around the territory of Russia and other countries for sixty years and collecting flies. I read this book overnight without stopping. I gave this example to show that our product is not only laureates and not only finalists; our achievements include public lectures, books that we send to libraries, and promotion of these books on social networks. This is a whole universe that Dmitry Zimin started. He explains his motivation very simply: he is a hedonist and wants to enjoy life.