(WHEN I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of mine...)
WHEN I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of mine who gave me my love for books and pictures promised to take me upon a memorable expedition. I was to go with him to the top of the tower of Old Saint Lawrence in Rotterdam. And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that of Saint Peter opened a mysterious door. "Ring the bell," he said, "when you come back and want to get out," and with a great grinding of rusty old hinges he separated us from the noise of the busy street and locked us into a world of new and strange experiences. For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phenomenon of audible silence. When we had climbed the first flight of stairs, I added another discovery to my limited knowledge of natural phenomena—that of tangible darkness. A match showed us where the upward road continued. We went to the next floor and then to the next and the next until I had lost count and then there came still another floor, and suddenly we had plenty of light. This floor was on an even height with the roof of the church, and it was used as a storeroom. Covered with many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned symbols of a venerable faith which had been discarded by the good people of the city many years ago. That which had meant life and death to our ancestors was here reduced to junk and rubbish. The industrious rat had built his nest among the carved images and the ever watchful spider had opened up shop between the outspread arms of a kindly saint. The next floor showed us from where we had derived our light. Enormous open windows with heavy iron bars made the high and barren room the roosting place of hundreds of pigeons. The wind blew through the iron bars and the air was filled with a weird and pleasing music. It was the noise of the town below us, but a noise which had been purified and cleansed by the distance. The rumbling of heavy carts and the clinking of horses' hoofs, the winding of cranes and pulleys, the hissing sound of the patient steam which had been set to do the work of man in a thousand different ways—they had all been blended into a softly rustling whisper which provided a beautiful background for the trembling cooing of the pigeons. Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And after the first ladder (a slippery old thing which made one feel his way with a cautious foot) there was a new and even greater wonder, the town-clock. I saw the heart of time. I could hear the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid seconds—one—two—three—up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise when all the wheels seemed to stop and another minute had been chopped off eternity. Without pause it began again—one—two—three—until at last after a warning rumble and the scraping of many wheels a thunderous voice, high above us, told the world that it was the hour of noon.
The Story of Mankind (Updated) (Liveright Classics)
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The winner of the first John Newbery Medal, now updated...)
The winner of the first John Newbery Medal, now updated by Robert Sullivan, remains a timeless classic for all ages.
Originally written in 1921 for the author’s grandchildren, Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind has charmed generations with its warmth, simplicity, and wisdom. Rather than the dry recitation of events so common in school textbooks, van Loon’s witty, amiable tone animates the story of human history as a grand and perpetually unfolding adventure. Beginning with the origins of human life and sweeping forward to illuminate all of history, van Loon’s incomparable prose and original illustrations present a lively rendering of the people and events that have shaped the world we live in today. This new version has been brought up to date by best-selling historian Robert Sullivan, who continues van Loon’s personable style, incorporating the most important developments of the early twenty-first century, including the war on terrorism, global warming, and the election of Barack Obama. Engagingly written, delightfully informative, and always entertaining, this is the necessary classic of all ages, for all ages. 177 illustrations
Van Loon's Lives,: Being a true and faithful account of a number of highly interesting meetings with certain historical personages, from Confucius and ... to us as our dinner guests in a bygone year
(lives, background and achievements of nearly a hundred of...)
lives, background and achievements of nearly a hundred of the great men and women of the past, from Plato and Confucius to Chopin and Emily Dickinson
Van Loon's Geography, The Story of the World We Live in
(A book of this grade is generally well kept and is in goo...)
A book of this grade is generally well kept and is in good shape to read and store. Sturdy spine, all pages intact physically. Solid cover. Might have acceptable shelve wear. Might, rarely, have very limited notes. Missing dust jacket.
(This book introduces visual and aural arts through the ag...)
This book introduces visual and aural arts through the ages and by distinct areas of the world. This edition has been cheerfully illustrated by Mr. Van Loon.
The Story of Mankind (1921), by Hendrik Willem van Loon (illustrated): World history
(The Story of Mankind was written and illustrated by Dutch...)
The Story of Mankind was written and illustrated by Dutch-American journalist, professor, and author Hendrik Willem van Loon and published in 1921. In 1922, it was the first book to be awarded the Newbery Medal for an outstanding contribution to children's literature. Written for his children (Hansje and Willem), The Story of Mankind tells in brief chapters the history of western civilization beginning with primitive man, covering the development of writing, art, and architecture, the rise of major religions, and the formation of the modern nation-state. Van Loon explains in the book how he selected what and what not to include by subjecting all materials to the question: Did the person or event in question perform an act without which the entire history of civilization would have been different? After its first edition, Van Loon had another edition published later in the 1920s which included an extra essay, called "After Seven Years" about the effects of World War I. Since Van Loon's death in 1944, The Story of Mankind has been added to extensively by his son, Gerrit van Loon. Hendrik Willem van Loon (January 14, 1882 – March 11, 1944) was a Dutch-American historian, journalist, and award-winning children's book author. He was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the son of Hendrik Willem van Loon and Elisabeth Johanna Hanken. He went to the United States in 1902 to study at Cornell University, receiving his degree in 1905. In 1906 he married Eliza Ingersoll Bowditch (1880–1955), daughter of a Harvard professor, by whom he had two sons, Henry Bowditch and Gerard Willem. The newlyweds moved to Germany, where van Loon received his Ph.D. from the University of Munich in 1911 with a dissertation that became his first book, The Fall of the Dutch Republic (1913). He was a correspondent for the Associated Press during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and again in Belgium in 1914 at the start of World War I. He lectured at Cornell University from 1915 to 1917; in 1919 he became an American citizen. Van Loon had two later marriages, to Eliza Helen (Jimmie) Criswell5 in 1920 and playwright Frances Goodrich Ames in 1927, but after a divorce from Ames he returned to Criswell (it is debatable whether or not they remarried); she inherited his estate in 1944.
Hendrik Willem van Loon was an American popular historian and illustrator. He was a Dutch-American, who authored nearly 50 books in his lifetime.
Background
Van Loon was born on January 14, 1882, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He was the second of two children and only son of Hendrik Willem van Loon, a well-to-do jeweler's son, and Elisabeth Johanna (Hanken) van Loon. A moody, sensitive boy, he suffered, as did his mother and sister, from the "uncertain temper" of his paranoid father.
When the latter broke with his own father and moved his family to The Hague, van Loon, at age nine, came under the protection of his maternal uncle, Jan Hanken, a surgeon, art connoisseur, and amateur musician, whose American wife, Sarah Parker, had been a music teacher.
Education
Van Loon was sent by his uncle Dr. Hanken to nearby boarding schools. His weekends he spent largely at the Hanken home, which was frequented by fledgling art dealers and young musicians. Encouraged by his uncle, van Loon developed his interests in history, art, and music, his instrument being the violin.
Hendrik's mother's death, in 1900, and his father's precipitate remarriage to an unpleasant, much younger woman led van Loon to accompany his uncle in 1902, to the United States, where he entered Cornell.
He also spent the year 1903-04, at Harvard but returned to Cornell, where he received his A. B. degree in 1905. Aspiring to an academic career, he quit newspaper work in 1907 to enroll at the University of Munich, where he received a doctorate in history in 1911. Aided by his American wife, he turned his doctoral thesis into his first book, The Fall of the Dutch Republic (1913).
Career
Espousing journalism, van Loon worked for the Associated Press in Washington, D. C. , and in 1906, was sent to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Warsaw to report on the aftermath of the 1905 revolution. In 1911, he returned to the United States and settled in Washington, where he vainly attempted to gain a foothold in the academic world. He fared better as an itinerant lecturer on modern European history, soon giving up the accustomed magic-lantern slides in favor of self-drawn maps and sketches made, as he talked, on large sheets of paper.
Van Loon taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin in the summer of 1914. With the outbreak of World War I, he went to Holland as a free-lance reporter. He returned to lecture at Cornell (1915 - 16) and published The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators (1916) and History with a Match (1917), an account of the voyages of discovery to North America illustrated with a match dipped in India ink which hinted at his later style.
For a brief, rather undistinguished period, Van Loon did publicity work in New York City, where he established contact with the American literary world centered in Greenwich Village. Ancient Man (1920) was projected as the first of a series of juvenile history books, but with the appearance of H. G. Wells's Outline of History, van Loon's publisher, Horace Liveright, conceived the revolutionary notion of his turning out a similar work aimed at the juvenile market.
Van Loon had joined the faculty of the small experimental Antioch College in Ohio in 1922, but he left after a year to join H. L. Mencken briefly on the editorial staff of the Baltimore Sun. At Liveright's suggestion, he wrote The Story of the Bible (1923), which did not do well. Fundamentalists took issue with van Loon's depiction of Christ as a historical figure, with no mention of the virgin birth or the resurrection. Almost in rebuttal, his next book, Tolerance (1925), was largely a history of bigotry and religious intolerance through the ages, voicing his admiration for such figures as Erasmus.
In America (1927), Life and Times of Pieter Stuyvesant (1928), and Man the Miracle Maker (1928), van Loon continued to cement his reputation as a "juvenile" author. This irked him. Seeking to break the mold, he produced in R. v. R. (1930) a largely autobiographical novel depicting the painter Rembrandt and his world. Its lack of success caused van Loon to quit Liveright.
Switching to Simon & Schuster, he soon had another best seller in Van Loon's Geography (1932). This was followed by The Arts (1937), which, being self-illustrated, dismayed art historians but delighted van Loon's loyal public. Yet another best seller was Van Loon's Lives (1942), in which he somewhat sentimentally cast himself as genial host to the great figures of history.
In 1935, he attracted a new audience through his radio talks over the National Broadcasting System, which were collected that year in Air-Storming. The rise of fascism in Europe stirred van Loon to write Our Battle (1938), his answer to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, and with the outbreak of World War II, he conducted a Dutch shortwave radio program over WRUL in Boston beamed at his Nazi-occupied homeland.
He died in 1944 at his home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, and was buried in the Old Greenwich Cemetery.
Achievements
Van Loon wrote many books, illustrating them himself. Most widely known among these is The Story of Mankind, a history of the world especially for children, which won the first Newbery Medal of the American Library Association in 1922.
Van Loon's anxieties over the war, his overweight, and perpetual neurasthenia, against which, as he said, "work is my only drug, " served to aggravate a heart condition which had been in evidence for many years.
Quotations:
“Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance. ”
“On the other hand, when you grow up you will discover that some of the people in this world never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man. ”
“High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed. ”
“For tolerance (and you must remember this when you grow older), is of very recent origin and even the people of our own so-called "modern world" are apt to be tolerant only upon such matters as do not interest them very much. ”
“Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession: their ignorance”
“In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised as King of England. Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?”
“For history is like life. The more things change, the more they remain the same. ”
“History is the mighty tower of experience, which time has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. ”
“History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy task to reach the top of this ancient structure and get the benefit of the full view. There is no elevator, but young feet are strong and it can be done. ”
“He was like one of those elderly gentlemen in Central Park who go around feeding birds and squirrels. Their pockets are filled with everything these small creatures may like to eat. The birds and the squirrels sense this and they perch on the shoulders of their benefactors and climb all over them in quest of what they consider their legitimate belongings. ”
“Is there any greater pleasure in this world than to sit around a table with people you really like, with whom you are tuned in on the same emotional and spiritual wave length, so that there never is any static, and with whom you agree so fully upon all matters of real significance that you can disagree just as heartily upon the nonessentials? We have by far too little of that sort of thing in America. We seem to feel that we should always be doing something. Just to sit and talk or, even worse, just to sit and do nothing at all, not even talk, is held to be a waste of time. How can one waste something that does not really exist, I never have been able to understand, but I do think that it would be of the greatest benefit to us as a nation if we could learn to spend at least half an hour after every meal sitting quietly around the dinner table. ”
“Never worry about what may happen tomorrow, for in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it won't. And don't take things too seriously, for very few things are worth it. ”
“For youth can no more live without some kind of hero than it can without its daily supply of fresh air and vitamins. ”
“Man is a predatory animal. He lives by eating other animals and he enriches himself by stealing that which belongs to his neighbor. Hence the history of the world is the history of war. ”
Personality
Van Loon became an American citizen on January 14, 1919. Van Loon's anecdotal style, his personal reflections upon great men and nations, and the profuse, curiously individual drawings with which he illustrated his books brought him a popularity and prestige which he took more seriously than his often flippant comments might have indicated. He professed indifference to academic critics who quarreled with his "slips of the pen" and slapdash generalizations.
Six feet, two-and-a-half inches tall and weighing close to 300 pounds, van Loon was an imposing figure on the lecture platform and a sought-after toastmaster.
Connections
On June 18, 1906, Hendrik married Eliza Ingersoll Bowditch, daughter of Henry Pickering Bowditch, former dean of the Harvard Medical School; they had two sons, Henry Bowditch and Gerard Willem. They divorced in 1920, and on August 3, of that year married Eliza Helen ("Jimmie") Criswell, a graduate of Bryn Mawr. They were divorced in 1927. On October 10, 1927, he married Frances Goodrich, actress and future playwright. This marriage, too, ended in divorce in 1929, van Loon having returned to his second wife, although they never remarried.
