Hendrik Willem van Loon

Life

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."Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.
Books written by Van Loon
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

Books about Van Loon



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.

References

Category:1882 births
Category:1944 deaths
Category:Dutch children's writers
Category:Dutch historians
Category:Dutch journalists
Category:Writers from Rotterdam