A review by natasoud
The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon

informative slow-paced

1.0

not a banger lol 

 

I’d say the book’s a little early anthropology, about half about Greece/Rome/Christianity, then a bunch of European history. 

 

Reads like a textbook and is obviously outdated and racist as hell toward like, everybody. 

 

Most of the anthropology he talks about has been long debunked and as a person who knows a bunch about the modern stuff, it was a painful read.

 

The last chapter though is the author explaining why he chose to include this or that and admits he thinks some of the chapters drag and wanted to start the whole book from scratch but the publishers wouldn’t let him re-write. I do appreciate the honesty.

 

Also the big sell for the book at the time was that it was an *illustrated* history book and that history books without pictures would never be exciting to children, so I guess I’ll thank him for starting that trend?