Hendrik Willem van Loon

**Hendrik Willem van Loon** (January 14, 1882 – March 11, 1944) was a historian and children's writer. He was born Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He moved to the United States in 1902.

## Life

He was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. His father was also named Hendrik Willem van Loon. His mother was named Elisabeth Johanna Hankin. In 1902, he went to the United States to study at Cornell University. He graduated from Cornell in 1905. In 1906 he married Eliza Ingersoll Bowditch. Her father was a teacher at Harvard. They had two sons, Henry Bowditch van Loon and Gerard Willem van Loon. After they got married, Hendrik and Eliza moved to Munich, Germany. Hendrik studied at the University of Munich. In 1911 he got his Ph.D. He had to write a long paper to show that he was a good enough student to get the Ph.D. The paper he wrote was called _The Fall of the Dutch Republic_. In 1913 he published it as a book. During the Russian Revolution of 1905 and again at the start of World War I he worked for the Associated Press. He went to the places where soldiers were fighting each other and wrote about what the battles were like. From 1915 to 1917 he taught at Cornell University. In 1919 he was made a citizen of the United States. In 1920 he married Eliza Helen (Jimmie) Criswell. In 1927 he married Frances Goodrich Ames, a woman who wrote plays. Later he stopped being married to Frances Ames. He went back to Eliza Criswell. No one knows if they got married again. When he died in 1944, he gave his things to Eliza Criswell.

## Writing

Hendrik Willem van Loon wrote lots of books. His most well-known book is _The Story of Mankind_. He wrote it and also drew many pictures and maps for it. It is a history of the world written for children. _The Story of Mankind_ won the first Newbery Medal in 1922. People have read _The Story of Mankind_ ever since it was first printed. Hendrik's son Gerard wrote more chapters for the book after more history had happened. Later, other people wrote even more chapters. The book now has about 500 pages. Hendrik also wrote lots of other books for children and young adults.

Hendrik Willem van Loon visited Germany lots of times in the 1920s. In 1933, when the Nazis ruled Germany, they told him he could not visit Germany any more. In 1938, Hendrik wrote a book that he called _Our Battle: Being One Man's Answer to "My Battle" by Adolf Hitler_. This book said why Hendrik did not like Adolf Hitler's book _Mein Kampf_. (_Mein Kampf_ means "My Battle" in the German language.) Franklin Delano Roosevelt liked Hendrik's book _Our Battle_ very much. In 1940, Hendrik helped Roosevelt try to get to be President of the United States.

## Things said by Van Loon

Someone once asked Hendrik Willem van Loon how to say his last name. He answered, "I still stick to the Dutch pronunciation of the double _o_—_Loon_ like _loan_ in 'Loan and Trust Co.' My sons will probably accept the American pronunciation. It really does not matter very much."

## Books written by Van Loon

These are the books that Hendrik Willem van Loon wrote. The dates show the first time each book was printed. The other names tell what publisher printed them.
- _The Fall of the Dutch Republic_, 1913, Houghton Mifflin Co.
- _The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom_, 1915, Doubleday Page & Co.
- _The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators_, 1916, The Century Co.
- _A Short History of Discovery: From the Earliest Times to the Founding of Colonies in the American Continent_, 1917, David McKay
- _Ancient man; the Beginning of Civilizations_, 1920, Boni and Liveright
- _The Story of Mankind_, 1921, Boni and Liveright
- _The Story of the Bible_, 1923, Boni and Liveright
- _Witches and Witch-Finders_, 1923, article from the June 1923 Mentor Magazine
- _The Story of Wilbur the Hat_, 1925, Boni and Liveright
- _Tolerance_, 1925, Boni and Liveright
- _The Liberation of Mankind: the story of man's struggle for the right to think_, 1926, Boni and Liveright
- _America: The Story of America from the very beginning up to the present_, 1927, Boni and Liveright
- _Adriaen Block_, 1928, Block Hall
- _Multiplex man, or the Story of Survival through Invention_, 1928, Jonathan Cape
- _Life and Times of Peter Stuyvesant_, 1928, Henry Holt
- _Man the Miracle Maker_, 1928, Horace Liveright
- _R. v. R.: the Life and Times of Rembrandt van Rijn_, 1930, Horace Liveright
- _If the Dutch Had Kept Nieuw Amsterdam_, in _If, Or History Rewritten_, edited by J. C. Squire, 1931, Simon and Schuster
- _Van Loon's Geography: The Story of the World We Live In_, 1932, Simon and Schuster
- _"Gold"_ 1933, article from the Cosmopolitan March 1933
- _An Elephant Up a Tree_, 1933, Simon and Schuster
- _An Indiscreet Itinerary or How the Unconventional Traveler Should See Holland by one who was actually born there and whose name is Hendrik Willem Van Loon_, 1933, Harcourt, Brace
- _The Home of Mankind: the story of the world we live in_, 1933, George G. Harrap
- _The story of inventions: Man, the Miracle Maker_, 1934, Horace Liveright
- _Ships: and How They Sailed the Seven Seas (5000 B.C.-A.D.1935)_, 1935, Simon and Schuster
- _Around the World With the Alphabet_, 1935, Simon and Schuster
- _Air-Storming: A Collection of 40 Radio Talks_, 1935, Harcourt, Brace
- _Love me not_, 1935
- _A World Divided is a World Lost_, 1935, Cosmos Publishing Co.
- _The Songs We Sing_ (with Grace Castagnetta), 1936, Simon and Schuster
- _The Arts_ (with musical illustrations by Grace Castagnetta), 1937, Simon and Schuster
- _Christmas Carols_ (with Grace Castagnetta), 1937, Simon and Schuster
- _Observations on the mystery of print and the work of Johann Gutenberg_, 1937, Book Manufacturer's Institute/New York Times
- _Our Battle: Being One Man's Answer to "My Battle" by Adolf Hitler_, 1938, Simon and Schuster
- _How to Look at Pictures: a Short History of Painting_, 1938, National Committee for Art Appreciation
- _Folk Songs of Many Lands_ (with Grace Castagnetta), 1938, Simon and Schuster
- _The Last of the Troubadours: The Life and Music of Carl Michael Bellman 1740-1795_ (with Grace Castagnetta), 1939, Simon and Schuster
- _The Songs America Sings_ (with Grace Castagnetta), 1939, Simon and Schuster
- _My School Books_, 1939, E. I. du Pont de Nemours
- _Invasion, being the personal recollections of what happened to our own family and to some of our friends during the first forty-eight hours of that terrible incident in our history which is now known as the great invasion and how we escaped with our lives_, 1940, Harcourt, Brace
- _The Story of the Pacific_, 1940, George G. Harrap
- _The Life and Times of Johann Sebastian Bach_, 1940, Simon and Schuster
- _Good Tidings_ (with Christmas songs by Grace Castegnetta), 1941, American Artists Group
- _The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, with a short life of the Author by Hendrik Willem van Loon of Rotterdam who also illustrated the Book_, 1942
- _Van Loon's Lives: Being a true and faithful account of a number of highly interesting meetings with certain historical personages, from Confucius and Plato to Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson, about whom we had always felt a great deal of curiosity and who came to us as dinner guests in a bygone year_, 1942, Simon and Schuster
- _Christmas Songs_, 1942
- _The Message of the Bells_ (with music by Grace Castagnetta), 1942, New York Garden City
- _Fighters for Freedom: the Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson and Simon Bolivar_, 1943, Dodd, Mead & Co.
- _The Life and Times of Scipio Fulhaber, Chef de Cuisine_, 1943
- _Adventures and Escapes of Gustavus Vasa, and how they carried him from his rather obscure origin to the throne of Sweden_, 1945
- _Report to Saint Peter, upon the kind of world in which Hendrik Willem van Loon spent the first years of his life_ - an unfinished, posthumously published autobiography, 1947, Simon and Schuster

## In popular culture

Francesco Guccini, a man from Italy who writes songs, wrote a song called "Van Loon". Guccini's father loved Hendrik Willem Van Loon's books. The song is on Guccini's music album called _Signora Bovary_.