Hendrik Willem van Loon (January 14, 1882 - March 11, 1944) was a Dutch-American historian and journalist.

Life and works

Born in Rotterdam, he came to the United States in 1903 to study at Cornell University. He was a correspondent during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and in Belgium in 1914 at the start of World War I. He later became a professor of history at Cornell University (1915-17) and in 1919 became an American citizen.

During the 1920s Van Loon wrote many books, most notably The Story of Mankind, a history of the world especially for children which won the first Newbery Medal in 1922. He went on to write many other very popular books aimed at young adults. As a writer he was known for emphasizing crucial historical events and giving a complete picture of individual characters, as well as the role of the arts in history. He also had an informal style which, particularly in The Story of Mankind, included personal anecdotes.

Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest "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.)

Bibliography

A partial list of books by Hendrik Willem Van Loon, with first publication dates.

• The Fall of the Dutch Republic, 1913
• The Romance of Discovery, 1917
• "The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators", 1917
• Ancient man; the beginning of civilizations, 1920
• The Story of Mankind, 1921
• The Story of the Bible, 1923
• Tolerance, 1925
• The Story of America, 1927
• Multiplex man, 1928
• Life and Times of Peter Stuyvesant, 1928
• R.v.R., 1930 (Fictional Biography of Rembrandt)
• "If the Dutch Had Kept Nieuw Amsterdam," in If, Or History Rewritten, edited by Philip Guedala (1931)
• Van Loon's Geography, 1932
• "An Elephant Up a Tree", 1933
• The story of inventions: Man, the miracle maker, 1934
• Ships and How They Sailed the Seven Seas, 1935
• Around the world with the alphabet and Hendrik Willem van Loon, 1935
• World divided is a world lost, 1935
• Home of mankind; the story of the world we live in, 1936
• The Arts, 1937
• Observations on the mystery of print and the work of Johann Gutenberg, 1937
• Our Battle: Being One Man's Answer to "My Battle" by Adolf Hitler, 1938
• How to Look at Pictures, 1938
• The Story of the Pacific, 1940
• Life and times of Johann Sebastian Bach, 1940
• Van Loon's Lives, 1942
• Thomas Jefferson, 1943
• Life and times of Simon Bolivar, 1943
• "Report to St. Peter", 1947 (Posthumously published autobiography)

Books about Van Loon

• Cornelis van Minnen (2005). Van Loon: Popular Historian, Journalist, and FDR Confidant. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-7049-1.�
• Gerard Willem Van Loon (1972). The story of Hendrik Willem van Loon. Lippincott. ISBN 0-397-00844-9.�

External link

• Biography
• Works by Hendrik Willem Van Loon at Project Gutenberg