Van Loon's Lives

Chapters

• 1 Desiderius Erasmus, Our First Guest, Arrives Punctually on Time and Gives Us a Most Delightful Evening
• 2 We Arrange a Room for Erasmus in the Veere Town Hall and Entertain Our Next Two Guests: William the Silent and General George Washington
• 3 Sir Thomas More Is the Guest of His Old Friend Desiderius Erasmus
• 4 This Time Erasmus Had a Surprise for Us, and We Make the Acquaintance of the Bachs and the Breughels
• 5 We Entertain Three Great Masters of the Spoken and Written Word and Are Honored by the Presence of Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Moliere
• 6 The Archbishop of Bithynia and the Archbishop of Cyrenaica Carry us Back to Another World Which We Would Just as Soon Forget
• 7 We Invite Two Guests of a Very Different Sort, and Descartes and Emerson Come to Make Us Forget Our Visitors of the Week Before
• 8 In Order Not to Be Too One-Sided, We Plan to Invite Two Members of the Feminine Sex, and the Empress Theodora of Byzantium and Queen Elizabeth of England Make Their Appearance
• 9 Robespierre and Torquemada Provide Us With a Nightmare We Shall Never Forget
• 10 The Buddha Sends His Regrets
• 11 Saint Francis, H. C. Andersen, and Mozart Come, But They Do Not Come Alone
• 12 We Entertain Beethoven, Napoleon, and My Own Great-Great-Grandfather and Listen to a Long Monologue
• 13 The Greatest Inventor of All Time Puts Us to Considerable Inconvenience
• 14 Plato and Confucius May Seem to Make Strange Dinner Companions, But They Got Along Very Nicely and Seemed to Enjoy Themselves and Each Other
• 15 Peter the Great and Charles XII of Sweden Are Invited, and Voltaire Comes Anyway, But Is, of Course, a Most Welcome Guest
• 16 Dante and Leonardo da Vinci Come to Dine, the Latter of Whom Drops In in the Literal Sense of the Word
• 17 How We Entertained Monsieur Montaigne and Doctor Rabelais and How Their Visit Almost Led to a Public Riot in Our Peaceful Village of Veere
• 18 And Now a Rather Strange Combination, Emily Dickinson and Frederic Chopin, But Emily Has the Time of Her Life, and Chopin Shows Us What Can Be Done with a Minni-Piano
• 19 The Sint Nikolaas Party, Given in Honor of the Lost Children of History and Attended by That Noble Old Fellow, Benjamin Franklin
• 20 Fridtjof Nansen, Jakob van Heemskerk, Willem Barents, and Surgeon de Veer Are Our Visitors on a Very Cold Night in December
• 21 I Get a Cable to Return to America, and So Thomas Jefferson Is the Last of Our Guests as Well as the Most Honored of All