The Story of Mankind, Hendrik Willem van Loon
The Story of Mankind, Hendrik Willem van Loon
List: $24.95 | Sale: $17.47
Club: $12.47

The Story of Mankind

Author: Hendrik Willem van Loon

Narrator: Sneha Mathan

Unabridged: 14 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/15/2011


Synopsis

The Story of Mankind revolutionized former methods of telling history. It received the first Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Nevertheless, critics and public alike hailed it as a book for all ages. Van Loon recounts history as living news, relating everything in the past to the present. He writes informally, making world history wonderfully alive and exciting. Of this book the author writes, the entrance of America upon the scene of international politics as the most important actorconvinced me that proper and reasonable understanding of historical cause and effect was the most important factor in the lives of the rising generation. And so my book treats the entire history of the human race as a single unit. It begins with the dim and hardly understood realm of the earliest past; it can be contained forever.

About Hendrik Willem van Loon

Hendrik Willem van Loon (1882–1944) was a Dutch-born American popular historian, born in Rotterdam, who migrated to the United States in 1903. A journalist and history teacher, in 1922 he published the bestselling The Story of Mankind, and from then onwards produced a number of popular histories.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Anne on February 25, 2024

The origins of mankind in a nutshell. Considering it was originally published in 1921, Van Loon's voice is still surprisingly accessible. And while the information is not 100% accurate, this has a quick and dirty look at the history of the world as historians kinda-sorta understood it when Van Loon wr......more

Goodreads review by Benji on March 07, 2011

My journey through the Newbery winners begins here with the Story of Mankind. I’ve never been a great book review writer. It’s hard for me to talk about a book without giving too much away, so for these Newbery winners, I think I will stick to a format. I will answer the following questions. What di......more

Goodreads review by Parmida R. A. on January 22, 2022

The Story of Mankind was written and illustrated by Dutch-American journalist, professor, and author Hendrik Willem van Loon and published in 1921. It was the first book to be awarded the Newbery Medal for an outstanding contribution to children's literature. Written for Van Loon's children, The Sto......more

Goodreads review by James on December 30, 2011

We found this in my grandma's basement after she died. I picked it up again at my folks' house, when I was looking for bedtime reading, and I went through it in bits and pieces, over the course of several visits. I went in with an open mind: I always try to love the book I'm reading, but then I alway......more

Goodreads review by Antof9 on December 02, 2008

I have finished The Book. Mr. van Loon's Narcoleptic Affect (thanks for that, Jen) notwithstanding, I enjoyed it. Seriously, I have never in my life fallen asleep reading a book as many times as I did this one. I lost count, but am pretty sure it was upwards of 10. That said, I marked a TON of things......more