Van Loon's geography;: The story of the world

by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Hardcover, 1937

Status

Available

Call number

910

Publication

Garden City Pub.Co (1937), 525 pages

User reviews

LibraryThing member MiaCulpa
An intriguing book for sure, "Van Loon's Geography" is at times a remarkable time capsule of its era (1932), with statements on who would want Austria in its then current form (thanks to van Loom I realised that Anchluss wasn't a big shock as there had been moves to "merge" the two nations for
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years), mixed with some of the most incredible broad sweeping stereotypical statements I've ever read (my favorite was how the people of Edinburgh were all intelligent, hard working types but were saddled by Glaswegians, who were all drunken layabouts).

When you mix all that with his rant about how Australian Aboriginals were the most miserable, useless people in the world, with nothing to recommend them, you get a somewhat strange result. Even more so, when, in my case, you buy a clearly bootlegged version in some dodgy bookshop in China with the odd bizarre spelling mistake (and without the sketches van Loom refers to throughout the book).

If nothing else, this book is almost the ultimate curio.
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LibraryThing member lidaskoteina
droll, Eurocentric, of its time (1937).
LibraryThing member lidaskoteina
droll, Eurocentric, of its time (1937).

Subjects

Language

Physical description

525 p.
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