Word: loon
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...LOON'S GEOGRAPHY?Hendrik Willem Van Loon?Simon & Schuster...
Geography, physical and political, has never been made a very exciting subject in school. Smart Hendrik Willem Van Loon makes it exciting by taking it out of school and glorifying it. He is well-advised in having as publishers smart Simon & Schuster, high-pressure popularizers. Written in Van Loon's familiar, not to say impertinent style, as if he were talking to children but hoped to be overheard by grownups, the 525 pages are thickly plummed with sketches and maps, many of them in bright colors. The book's jacket conceals a gaily inaccurate map of the world, "suitable...
Though Nature is the central character, Man is hero of Van Loon's Geography. He is shown against an economic and geographic background, his character and achievements modified by the contours of his country, the bias of a mountain race, the tendency of a trade route. Not pretending to be anything but a "poor ama-teur," Author Van Loon makes a blanket apology for statistical inaccuracies, explains that the authorities he has had to depend upon contradict themselves. Doubtless few professional geographers will shoot a sitting bird by reading Van Loon's Geography for mistakes; but even a fellow-amateur...
...Loon's breezy mnemonic method of imparting knowledge he explains earthquakes by a pile of books, what is happening to the earth's surface by half-a-dozen clean handkerchiefs, the central Spanish plateau with a soup plate, two saucers and a spoon. The inner workings of the Gulf Stream, the puzzle of which is latitude and which is longitude, are other mysteries brightly revealed...
...large (6 ft. 3 in.), fat (225 Ib.) size. As with many big men, his voice is unexpectedly high. At literary teas, to which he grimly goes, he suffers, becomes galvanized with shyness. He speaks English with a slight accent that sounds Irish rather than Dutch. Van Loon arrived in the U. S. at 21, was graduated from Cornell (1905), became successively newshawk, Ph.D., lecturer. A. P. correspondent in Belgium at the beginning of the War, he saw the siege of Antwerp, was nearly caught by the advancing German army. Nearly caught by poverty after the War, he tricked...