房龙文集:致天堂守门人
（美）房龙 ；朱子仪
北京出版社 / 2002-01-01
Hendrik Willem van Loon (January 14, 1882 – March 11, 1944) was a Dutch-American historian and journalist.
Contents1 Life and works |
Life and works
He was born in Rotterdam, 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. 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.
In 1906 he married Eliza Ingersoll Bowditch, daughter of a Harvard professor, by whom he had two sons, Henry Bowditch and Gerard Willem. He had two later marriages, to Eliza Helen Criswell 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 re-married) who inherited his estate in 1944.
From the 1910s until his death, 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 in 1922. The book was later updated by Van Loon and has continued to be updated, first by his son and later by other historians.
However, he also wrote 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 and thought-provoking 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 works by Hendrik Willem van Loon, with first publication dates and publishers.
- 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, 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
- 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, 1927, Boni and Liveright
- Adriaen Block, 1928, Block Hall
- Multiplex man, or the Story of survival through invention, 1928
- Life and Times of Peter Stuyvesant, 1928, Henry Holt
- Man the Miracle Maker, 1928, Horace Liveright
- R. v. R.: the Life and Times of Rembrant van Rijn, 1930, Horace Liveright
- If the Dutch Had Kept Nieuw Amsterdam, in If, Or History Rewritten, edited by J. C. Squire, 1931
- Van Loon's Geography, 1932, Simon and Schuster
- An Elephant Up a Tree, 1933, Simon and Schuster
- An Indiscreet Itinerary, 1933, Harcourt, Brace
- The story of inventions: Man, the Miracle Maker, 1934, Horace Liveright
- Ships: and How They Sailed the Seven Seas, 1935, Simon and Schuster
- Around the World With the Alphabet, 1935, Simon and Schuster
- Erasmus "The Praise of Folly" with a short life of the author by Gerard Willem Van Loon, 1942 . For the Classic Club, by Walter J.Black of New York.
- Air-Storming (radio talk), 1935, Harcourt, Brace
- Love me not, 1935
- A World Divided is a World Lost, 1935
- The Home of Mankind; the story of the world we live in, 1936
- The Songs We Sing (with Grace Castagnetta), 1936, Simon and Schuster
- The Arts, 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
- Our Battle: Being One Man's Answer to "My Battle" by Adolf Hitler, 1938
- How to Look at Pictures, 1938
- Folk Songs of Many Lands (with Grace Castagnetta), 1938
- The Last of the Troubadours, 1939
- The Songs America Sings (with Grace Castagnetta), 1939
- My School Books, 1939
- Invasion, 1940
- The Story of the Pacific, 1940
- The Life and Times of Bach, 1940
- Good Tidings, 1941
- Van Loon's Lives, 1942
- Christmas Songs, 1942
- The Message of the Bells, 1942
- Fighters for Freedom: the Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson and Simon Bolivar, 1943
- The Life and Times of Scipio Fulhaber, Chef de Cuisine, 1943
- Adventures and Escapes of Gustavus Vasa, 1945
- Report to Saint Peter - an unfinished, posthumously published autobiography, 1947
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.
- Erasmus with a short life of the author by Gerard Willem Van Loon (1972). The Praise of Folly, For the Classic Club, by Walter J.Black of New York.
Trivia
The Italian songwriter Francesco Guccini has composed a song, dedicated to the memory of his father. The song is titled "Van Loon" because Guccini's father loved Van Loon's books when he was young and appears in the album Signora Bovary.
External links
- Biography from the Universalist Historical Society (UUHS)
- Works by Hendrik Willem Van Loon at Project Gutenberg
******The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Story of Mankind******
FOREWORD
For Hansje and Willem:
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 rub-
bish. 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.
On the next floor were the bells. The nice little bells and
their terrible sisters. In the centre the big bell, which made
me turn stiff with fright when I heard it in the middle of the
night telling a story of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it
seemed to reflect upon those six hundred years during which
it had shared the joys and the sorrows of the good people of
Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like the blue jars in
an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little fellows, who
twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the
country-folk who had come to market to buy and sell and hear
what the big world had been doing. But in a corner--all alone
and shunned by the others--a big black bell, silent and stern,
the bell of death.
Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and
even more dangerous than those we had climbed before, and
suddenly the fresh air of the wide heavens. We had reached
the highest gallery. Above us the sky. Below us the city--
a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily crawling hither
and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular business,
and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the
open country.
It was my first glimpse of the big world.
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