Van Loon: Popular Historian, Journalist, and FDR Confidant [Paperback]

Upon his death, Hendrik van Loon was described in The Times obituary as 'one of the most engaging products of the marriage between Holland and the United States'. One of FDR's true and closest friends, van Loon emigrated from the Netherlands to the United States at age 20, in 1902. Working as a historian, journalist, illustrator, and radio commentator, van Loon immersed himself in American cultural life from the 1920s through the '40s, until his death three months before D-Day. Van Loon's professional relationships and friendships with such distinguished persons as Sinclair Lewis, Van Wyck Brooks, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Herbert Hoover, and Fiorello La Guardia bolster his place as a celebrity of his times. This biography is an exciting and nuanced portrait of a man deeply involved in American cultural life in the first half of the twentieth century.Preface; A.M.Schlesinger Jr. Acknowledgments Prologue PART I: THE FORMATIVE YEARS A Troubled Youth in Holland (1882-1902) Cornell-Harvard-Cornell (1902-1905) Associated Press Journalist in Russia and Poland (1905-1907) Historical Training in Munich (1907-1911) PART II: IN SEARCH OF A PLACE Washington Years of Trial and Error (1912-1914) The Great War (1914-1918) Life in The Village (1918-1920) PART III: THE JAZZ AGE The Breakthrough (1921-1922) The Prince of Popularizers (1922-1928) The Veere Paradise (1928-1931) PART IV: THE THIRTIES The Educator (1931-1935) For Roosevelt and The Arts (1936-1937) The Prophet of the Coming Wrath (1938-1940) PART V: THE GREAT FIGHT: WORLD WAR II For the Cause of Freedom (1940-1941) The Reincarnation of Erasmus (1942) Living on Borrowed Time (1943-1944) Epilogue Notes Bibliography List of Illustrations Index

Hendrik Willem van Loon, the Dutch-American writer and illustrator, was an extraordinary character. Larger-than-life, he overflowed with exuberance and gusto, and he devoted his talent to writing popular history in a delightful way. Cornelis van Minnen has written an arl³2