title: Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights (Studies in the Arcadian Library)
author:  Robert Irwin 
description: <br />"<em>Visions of Jinn</em> is chock-full of interesting information and beautiful pictures."--<em>Children's Literature Association Quarterly</em>
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  TO ARIEL
  
  
  ## Preface
  
  
  I HAVE tried in this book to accomplish the first part of a pleasant
  assignment which I rashly laid upon myself some twenty years ago: to write a
  history of civilization. I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little space
  as I can, of the contributions that genius and labor have made to the cultural
  heritage of mankind—to chronicle and contemplate, in their causes, character
  and effects, the advances of invention, the varieties of economic
  organization, the experiments in government, the aspirations of religion, the
  mutations of morals and manners, the masterpieces of literature, the
  development of science, the wisdom of philosophy, and the achievements of art.
  I do not need to be 