"The Story of Mankind" by Hendrik Willem Van Loon is a book published in 1921. Written for his children, this illustrated history traces Western civilization from primitive humans through the development of writing, art, architecture, and religion to the modern nation-state. Van Loon includes only those people and events that fundamentally altered civilization's course. The book won the inaugural Newbery Medal in 1922 for outstanding children's literature. (This is an automatically generated summary.)