The Story of Mankind

In 1921, a Dutch-American journalist sat down to tell his two young children the story of humanity, and accidentally created the first book ever to win the Newbery Medal. Hendrik Willem van Loon had a radical idea: what if history wasn't a parade of dates and battles, but a grand adventure that a father could share with his kids? The Story of Mankind traces the sweep of human civilization from the first primitive ancestors scratching in the dirt to the formation of nations, the rise of religions, and the birth of the modern world. Van Loon drew every illustration himself, creating an intimate visual companion to his witty, conversational prose. He chose what to include by asking a simple question: would the world be fundamentally different without this person or event? The result is a book that feels less like a textbook and more like sitting by the fire while a brilliant, restless mind shows you how we got here. Updated multiple times since its first publication, it remains a remarkable feat of making the enormous span of human history feel personal, urgent, and strangely intimate.