Van Loon (1882-1944) was a Dutch American writer and historian.Van Loon's full name is Hendrik William Van Loon, born on January 14, 1882 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His family is rich, but his relationship with his father is not harmonious, so he likes to escape to the "past" since he was a child. In historical works Find spiritual solace inVan Loon went to the United States and Germany to study after 1903. During his stay in the United States, he completed undergraduate courses at Cornell University.Afterwards, he went to Germany and received a doctorate from the University of Munich in 1911.However, he did not start his academic career as a pure study. On the contrary, he looked down on this kind of life. He said: "Once learning puts on the slippers of experts, it hides in its so-called luxurious house and shakes the fertilizer from the soil on its shoes." When it left, it pre-announced its own death. The intellectual life isolated from people will lead people to destruction." Fang Loon wandered all his life, he traveled around the world, worked as an editor, a reporter, and once Taught at several universities in the United States.His genius, his hard study, his life experience, and his deliberate practice (he once learned the skill of speaking humorously from popular theater), made him a man of many talents.He can speak and write ten languages, plays a beautiful violin, and he also likes to draw, and the illustrations for all his books are his own.All of these have laid a solid foundation for his success.

From 1913, Van Loon began to write history books. In 1921, he became famous in one fell swoop and became popular all over the world. Until his death in 1944, Van Loon wrote a total of more than 20 works.These works include Beginnings of Civilization ("Ancient Men", "Ancient Men"), "Stories of Invention", "Stories of the Bible" ("Rumor Bible"), "Stories of America", "Van Loon Geography" ("Homeland of Man") ") "The Art of Man" ("The Emancipation of Man") "Conversations with the Greats of the World" "The Life of Bach" "The Ship Sailing the Seven Seas" ("The Dutch Navigator Collection") "The Life of Rembrandt" and "The Dutch Republic History of Rise and Fall" and so on.Van Loon's works were well-known all over the world at that time, China, Holland, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Japan, India, the Soviet Union, Spain, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Greece and other countries have successively translated and published his works . On March 11, 1944, Van Loon died in Connecticut, USA.On the day of his death, the United States "Sunday Express" published the obituary with the title: History has made his reputation-Van Loon's death.Fang Loon is a Ph.D. in history with a professional background, but he did not limit history to a few experts. He used his brilliant pen to write history that everyone can understand and is relevant to everyone.

As soon as it came out, it attracted unanimous cheers from the book critics and won Van Loon the best children's book award that year.Within five years, more than 30 editions of this book were printed, with no less than 10 million copies. Van Loon himself is said to have earned $500,000 from this book alone.Indeed, the book looks like a book for children, and it is indeed so. Van Loon's witty language is fascinating, and his own hand-painted illustrations make the whole book extraordinarily dazzling.People read this book frantically within five years, and ten years later, or even longer, people are still reading this book, and it has been translated into more than 20 languages.People in many parts of the world regard this book as the best introduction to general history of that era.The history of human life and destiny has become a feast of language through Van Loon's meticulous attention to detail, and readers have learned something unconsciously in a relaxed and joyful way.Even those professional historians who intended to criticize this book admitted after reading that: Under Van Loon's wonderful pen, those fossil-like characters in history seem to wake up and come to life one by one.

The content of the book focuses on the ancient East and modern Europe.In terms of length, it is obviously dominated by the development of Western civilization.Regarding Chinese culture, Van Loon only used a small amount of space in the chapter of "Buddha and Confucius".As a Western scholar, Fang Loon is more concerned about the modernization process of Western culture, and it is this process that has become the biggest driving force for the transformation of civilization in recent centuries. The Western world started from the Renaissance, and shifted from "concern to God" to "concern to man". This did not appear suddenly, but a revival of the Greek spirit bit by bit. This revival and the Roman law code influence, and the rise of modern commerce, laid the foundations of the modern world.In Van Loon's book, history advances in battle after battle, from the disputes in the ancient lands of the East, to the disputes between Athens and Sparta, Rome and Carthage, to the conflict between Christianity and Islam. The collision, to the rise of the constitutional state, to the colonization movement, to the First World War.Van Loon seems to prove such a thing in this book: human beings have been exploring the possibility of a better world, and the spirit of enlightenment based on reason and common sense is still inspiring human beings to find a better spiritual home. Frustrated, human beings still hope bleakly that they will finally be able to withstand the ever-increasing flood of ignorance and bigotry with a heart of tolerance.

Fang Loon is knowledgeable, sharp in thinking, friendly and agile in writing, and eventually became a famous person, but his enlightenment work often brought him only loneliness and loneliness.Because Van Loon advocated the theory of evolution in the book, the book was banned from public libraries in twenty-four states in the United States at that time; and Van Loon's description of the Virgin and Child in the book "Stories of the Bible" was considered disrespectful, making He was quite blamed; and the book, which strongly criticized political and cultural tyranny and vigorously promoted the so-called heresy and free spirit, also received a cold reception for a time.Throughout his life, Van Loon hoped that common sense and mutual understanding could become the basis for building a more rational and better human society. However, his social ideals were not fully realized, and he was surrounded by doubts and suspicions. left this world.But in Van Loon's life, he was never discouraged or lapsed into negativity.Van Loon pins his hopes on the younger generation, hoping that they can pass on the light of civilization.

The translation and introduction of Van Loon's works by the Chinese publishing industry began in the 1920s.The Commercial Press published Ms. Shen Xingren's translation in 1925, divided into two volumes.Mr. Cao Juren, a famous modern Chinese scholar, historian, journalist and writer, bought a Chinese translation by chance while waiting for the bus. Later, he described it in his "Shu Lin Xin Hua": After holding the book in his hand, he "has been I saw Shanghai North Railway Station from Zhenru, and then I saw my home from North Station, and I saw dawn from dusk, and I went to bed after watching it.”Mr. Cao wrote in his later memoir "My World and Me": "In the past 50 years, I have always read and read, and there is no other book that attracts me so much. I also determined to write a book. This is a story about human beings in the East. The time is pressing, so it seems impossible to write; but the influence of Fang Long on me is really more profound than that of Wang Chuanshan and Zhang Shizhai!"

As we all know, Fang Loon's books have a lot of knowledge and proper nouns, and because Fang Loon himself stands on the cultural standpoint of Westerners, there will naturally be many references in his speech that are not clear to Chinese readers.In order to solve this problem, on the one hand, this book tries to use the translation method of proper nouns that is relatively popular in the academic circle, and on the other hand, it makes a lot of notes, some of which refer to and quote the contents of the latest edition of "Encyclopedia of China".This book hopes to provide a new translation that can be grafted with the cultural background of Chinese readers through such a method.

Of course, there are still many areas for improvement in this translation, and I hope Fang can criticize and correct me.