“In a world where science is usually reputed as the only way to improve our lives, humanities, and reading in particular, are here vindicated as a beneficial tool to improve our mental health and well-being. The act of reading connects us to a community of past and present writers and readers, puts us in contact with our feelings and emotions towards ourselves and others, and makes us experience what it truly means to be human in a way that other disciplines simply cannot. It comes as no surprise that the resulting knowledge derived from it about both the world inside and around us has immense positive value for our physical and mental health, as we set out in this book to prove with measurable data.” -Prof. Antonio Cortijo Ocaña, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA