The Arts by Hendrik Willem Van Loon The Story of Painting and Sculpture and Architecture and Music as well as all the So-Called Minor Arts from the Days of the Caveman Until the Present Time by Hendrik Willem Van Loon (Author, Illustrator) Publisher: Simon Schuster; Fifth Printing edition (1939) Hardcover: 677 pages Item Weight: 3.05 pounds 6.4 x 9.5 inches The Arts (The Story of Painting and Sculpture and Architecture and Music as well as all the So-Called Minor Arts from the Days of the Caveman Until the Present Time). Written and Illustrated by Hendrik Willem Van Loon. In the space of nearly 700 pages and with the lively aid of the most extraordinary drawings he has ever made, Dr. van Loon gives the general reader a love for and an understanding of the background of all that is most enduring in the arts. He covers painting, architecture music, sculpture, and the so called minor arts. He begins with the cave drawings of 25,000 B.C. and comes down to our own day, with way stops at Egypt, Babylon, and Chaldea; at the Athens of Pericles; amid the mysterious remains of Etruscan art; in Byzantium and medieval Russia; in the desert of the Islamites and the gardens of beauty loving Persians; in Provence, Renaissance Italy, Rembrandt's Holland, Beethoven's Vienna.. ----------------------- Hendrik Willem van Loon (January 14, 1882 – March 11, 1944) was a Dutch-American historian, journalist, and children's book author. From the 1910s until his death, Van Loon wrote many books, illustrating them himself. Best remembered among these is The Story of Mankind (1921), a history of the world intended for children, which won the first Newbery Medal in 1922. The book was later updated by Van Loon, then again by his son, and later still by other historians. He wrote many popular books aimed at young adults. As a writer he was known for emphasizing crucial historical events and giving a full picture of individual characters, as well as the role of the arts in history. He had an informal and thought-provoking style which, particularly in The Story of Mankind, included personal anecdotes. As an illustrator of his own books, he was known for his lively black-and-white drawings and his chronological diagrams. In 1923 and 1924, he was a professor of history at Antioch College. After having revisited Germany many times in the 1920s, he was banned from the country when the Nazis came to power. His book Our Battle, Being One Man's Answer to "My Battle" by Adolf Hitler (1938) earned him the respect of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in whose 1940 presidential campaign he worked, calling on Americans to fight totalitarianism.