The Story of Mankind
Introduction
The author of the book, Hendrik Willem van Loon, is a historical popular book writer, a illustrator and a reporter from American. He has written a variety of books to introduce history, art and geography, such as The Story of Mankind, The Story of the Bible and Tolerance. His book change the complex history to some interesting story, in this way he attracts many people’s interest to the glorious history of mankind.
The book The Story of Mankind covers the whole history which start from the formation of the Earth to the 20th century. Its purpose, as the author writes in the foreword, is to show the glorious past of ourselves, in order to give us new courage to face the future, as well as guide the beginners to the mystery of history.
In my point of view, the book actually almost complete its task except some disadvantage. I will give a further analysis below.
Summary
First of all, the author introduces how the prehistoric human manage to survive the Ice Age using their brain. Then the mankind begins to create civilization. The Egyptians and The Babylonians are fed by the crop growing in the fertilized soil along three big rivers. Later the author moves to the Aegean Sea to tell the story of the Crete island and the Greek. After it is the great Rome’s turn. The readers are able to learn its rise and fall from the following chapters. After Jesus born, it takes many chapter to describe how the Christian spread the belief to the God and how the Europe fall into the middle age——also call the dark age. Fortunately, the Renaissance finally comes and then there are a lot of revolutions and wars. As time went by, the Great discoveries widen the stage of this book so that the whole world join this show. Finally, the modern time comes and may the story of mankind continue to the far future. Additionally, the author introduce the Buddha and the Confucius in short.
Evaluation of this book
The book does almost reach its purpose. The author successfully concentrates the long history into a thin book, as well as write down them in the form of interesting and simple story. When I finish it, I have an overall impression to the human history. At the same time, I feel my desire to read more book about history to have a deepen understanding in some period.
However, from the summary of the book you can find a big problem——the author just concentrates on the Europe cavillation. He obviously ignores the eastern part of the world, which also creates splendid civilization.
Moreover, the only chapters about the eastern civilization (the Mohammed, the Buddha and the Confucius) are not really accord with reality. For example, in the Confucius’s chapter the author mentions that in the time the Confucius lived, there is no central government in China. The author also makes an analogy between the Jesus and the Confucius, which I think is not reasonable as the Confucian culture is not a religion like Christian.
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