The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Last night I finished reading the book version of condensed soup. Hendrik Willem Van Loon's The Story of Mankind was the first ever Newberry Award winner in 1922. Van Loon set out to record the history of humankind for his grandchildren and selected events from thousands of years of history. His criterion for an event to be mentioned was whether or not the event had a significant influence on the global sphere.

This 292 page book starts back with pre-historic man and flows up through World War I. My own disconnect with this book I think is 2 pronged. For one, Van Loon's theory (for which he spends far too much time mea culpa-ing about not including more) that the only important events in history are the ones that rocked the global stage. This "greatest hits" approach to history gives the shallowest, most superficial view of how our cultures have evolved and how certain events have come to pass.

The second objection I have to Van Loon's "story" is that along with his apologies for cutting out certain events and flows of history, he tries to maintain that he wrote the "story" as a neutral party, not injecting his own opinion. Yet, this tale is riddled with his own prejudices and thoughts. Many of which are wildly racist (and granted, it was written in a much different era), but this white protestant man takes many a stab at the Romans, the French, the Catholics, and many others.

What I am most looking forward to is comparing this book to the other winners of the award to see how they have evolved from this first winner and from the era of the first winner.