The Story of the Bible

Author: Hendrik Willem van Loon
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Van Loon series books are one of the greatest gifts ever offered to a tragic world. What was once dry and uninteresting scientific knowledge, under Van Loon's magical touch, captivated both adults and children, leaving them engrossed without realizing it. In the 1990s, the psychological climate of China had shifted from the fervent atmosphere of the 1980s, where emotions and ideals intertwined, to a pragmatic and ambitious era. Reading trends leaned towards knowledge and entertainment. In 1996, Van Loon's The Arts of Man, Conversations with the Greats of the World, and The Bach Story were translated and published, instantly sparking a sales frenzy. As the planner of this series, I was deeply inspired. The readers praised the books overwhelmingly, with reviews focusing on two main points: one was nostalgia for Van Loon, recalling the (emotion) of reading him in the 1980s; the other was the intellectual joy and light-hearted reading pleasure brought by the new translations of Van Loon's works. Reflecting on it, Van Loon's The Arts of Man was also published by another company in the late 1980s, but it sold almost no copies. The stark contrast between the two publications etches the traces of readers' changing reading tastes in the annals of time.