The Atlantic Bookshelf: A Guide to Good Books

A DUTCHMAN, Hendrik Willem Van Loon, has been termed ‘one of the world’s finest living pedagogues.’ Certainly there are mighty few who can explain things as tersely, as graphically, as he does in his pictures and prose. A native of Rotterdam, he was educated at Cornell, Harvard, the University of Munich. He saw history in the making as a press correspondent in the Russian revolution of 1906 and in Belgium at the outbreak of the war. When Europe had quieted down he returned to his studies of the past. After three books glorifying the Dutch Republic he published the first of his popular expositions. The Story of Mankind.

His latest work, reviewed for us by Dr. Barbour, director of the Harvard Zoölogical Museum, is the September selection of the Book-of-theMonth Club and the Scientific Book Club.