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 by Hendrik Willem Van Loon hits the £1 shelf in my shop.
George G. Harrap, 1953, Hardback in dust wrapper.
Illustrated by way of: Black & White Drawings; Colour Drawings; Illustrated endpapers and blanks;
From the cover: This book tells the story of the lives, the backgrounds, the achievements, and the personal philosophies of nearly fifty of the great men and women of the past, from Plato and Confucius to Fridtjof Nansen and Thomas Jefferson.
Van Loons Lives, a big book of more than six hundred pages overflowing with the inimitable illustrations both in full colour and black and white by the author, is Dr van Loons first major work in more than five years. It carries on the tradition begun by The Story of Mankind, The Home of Mankind, and The Arts. Where those great best-sellers told of the history, the home, and the creative genius of mankind, this latest book is the story of the aspirations of mankind, of the never-ending struggle for liberty of mind and action.
Van Loons Lives is essentially a human book. The method which the author has chosen to tell the story of these men and women of the past is as refreshing as it is original. The reader meets them Robespierre, Saint Francis, Queen Elizabeth, and all the others at a series of weekly dinner parties, delightfully mythical dinner parties, which the author and a friend are alleged to have given a few years ago at a house in the old village of Veere, on the Dutch coast.
Very Good in Good Dust Wrapper. Edges of the dust wrapper somewhat frayed at the spine ends and corners. Price Clipped. Text complete, clean and tight but a little age-tanned.
Red boards with Gilt titling to the Spine.
646 pages. 8¾” x 5¾”.
This book will be listed, sooner or later, for £6.50 on my delightful website… (added to my Fiction Author: L category.) but get 50% off buying from my blog… below…