Books with author Christopher Long

Whether it's the corporate boardroom or the preschool playground, today's world has become a competitive, cutthroat place. Help give your little one the philosophical leg up with Machiavelli for Babies. Teach them how to acquire and wield great power, and ruthlessly bring destruction upon their rivals. The book features time-tested classic advice from history's most clever and scheming political adviser Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince, accompanied by hilarious and bizarre mashup baby photos of inspiration and wonder. Prepare your little prince or princess to claim and defend the power that is rightfully theirs, with wisdom such as... "He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command." "It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver." "Politics have no relation to morals." "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."

In what passed for once upon a time to an entity of the infinite persuasion, God noticed some of his celestial flock had become listless, disengaged, and even a wee bit crabby...God's Little Red Pen is an original short story that wraps a humorous "what if?" into the grand "how & why?" by showing us an alternate take on creation where an exasperated God, looking to break his celestial flock out of a collective funk, enlists the help of his angels to work on his newest pet project: a little thing called "The Universe." From matter to mammals to math, every idea is up for the making so long as it passes one simple test; serve a purpose or be X'd from existence by God's little red pen. (Sorry, Mr. Jackalope.)While not everyone is thrilled about the whole affair (just ask the seraphim in charge of geology), one plucky angel's creations will either make her a legend...or land her a first class ticket to purgatory. Often funny, sometimes sad, and maybe a teeny bit thought provoking, God's Little Red Pen is a quick and quirky look at the big bang, where even a deity can be surprised by the imagination of his own creations.

Keeping My Hope, a historical fiction graphic novel written by 14 year old Christopher Huh, talks about the life of a young teenage boy named Ari Kolodiejski, who is caught in the horrors of the Final Solution. Now as a parent and grandparent, he tells his life story to his grandchildren. After surviving the world's most deadliest camp, he hopes to pass on his life legacy to his family.Ari is a strong and courageous teen who must battle for his life throughout the second world war. Ari is forever scarred from his deep past. Despite being kept prisoner at the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp, seeing the untimely death of hundreds, and forced to endure unbearable conditions in lice infested clothing, Ari keeps his friends close and struggles to live. Throughout his stay in the camp, he meets two inmates who both stand along with him, trying to help as often as they can. Friendship and belief is all they have left, in which the Nazis and the war strip away from the trio and ultimately brings the devastating disaster that awaits. When Ari and his two friends are slowing down in a death march during a blizzard and his friend has frostbite, Ari still helps his friend despite an SS guard approaching them with a pistol. He even claims that "carrying Saul was a challenge" (page 149), but does not want to leave him in the snow, knowing the fate his friend would face.He tries to help and aid his fellow camp inmates whenever possible. During at his stay at Auschwitz III, everyone fears one Kapo guard who is known for being a sadist on the prisoners with a rubber truncheon. Ari not only stands up against the Kapo, he even goes to the point of scaring him too. The guard showed "in his eyes...he was confused, maybe even fearful. Almost as if he was the beaten victim" (page 104). No matter what consequences are to come, he always gives his best effort in order to make a situation better. Throwing himself into the line of fire while no one else would is the shocking reality that made those like Ari from ordinary people to heroes.A true friend and strong Samaritan, Ari Kolodiejski is a person who is stuck with the ability to make anyone into being a friend with him. After his liberation of six years of terror, he tries to rebuild his life to replace the one he lost a lifetime ago. With his family's history stored safely in the minds of his grandchildren, he can now preserve his memories for his great-grandchildren and their children to remember. Keeping My Hope is an excellent book, and an even better one with the character of Ari.

This unique encyclopedia enables students to understand the myriad ways that the Columbian Exchange shaped the modern world, covering every major living organism from pathogens and plants to insects and mammals.Most people have only the vaguest notion of how profoundly the world was changed by Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Indeed, some of what is commonly regarded as "traditional" Native American life and culture―living in teepees and hunting buffalo from horseback, for example―came from the arrival of Europeans. This encyclopedia helps students acquire fundamental information about the Columbian Exchange through approximately 100 alphabetically arranged entries on animals, plants, diseases, and items that were exchanged, accompanied by sidebars throughout that provide interesting discussions of key people, companies, and other related topics. The work begins with an introductory essay that overviews the Columbian exchange and not only addresses its biological and cultural components but also treats it as a political and economic event. The alphabetically organized entries cover topics ranging from the African slave trade, almonds, and alpacas to watermelon, whooping cough, and yellow fever. The encyclopedia also offers a chronology of the major events of the Columbian Exchange as well as 15 transcribed primary source documents that enable students to "look into history directly," including passages about the exchange that focus on the Irish Potato Famine, the slave trade, and the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919. • Represents the only encyclopedia to comprehensively treat the Columbian Exchange and document how this watershed event in history changed the world, not just in North America but worldwide• Provides full accounts of demographic and epidemiological trends and how the planet's current biodiversity resulted from the events of the Columbian Exchange• Includes primary documents that offer students material for analysis and promote critical thinking skills, thus supporting Common Core State Standards• Supplies both entry bibliographies and a selected, general bibliography to direct students to sources of additional information

Al Capone dove for the floor when he saw the flash of the camera, while his startled body guards drew their guns. The actress Miriam Hopkins ran screaming from the camera while Lyndon Johnson ran towards it. General Jimmy Doolittle called him a Son of a Bitch, while the Pope called him his friend. Bob Hope asked if he would escort Hope's wife to church, and John Barrymore asked if he would hide him from his mistress. Cary Grant demanded a shoe shine, Eleanor Roosevelt demanded an apology, and Harry Truman demanded a bourbon. Who was this guy? He was Mike Rotunno, and he was a photographer for one of Chicago's newspapers. Yet, he also photographed airplanes for the airlines, starting in the 1920's, the beginning of his 50 year career at Chicago's Midway airport. In that span he got to know everyone, great or small, and his story is like a cross between the movie The Terminal" and "Forrest Gump." He introduced movie stars to baseball players, Marilyn Monroe to a room full o."

The Victorian era was the first great "Age of Doubt" and a critical moment in the history of Western ideas. Leading nineteenth-century intellectuals battled the Church and struggled to absorb radical scientific discoveries that upended everything the Bible had taught them about the world. In The Age of Doubt, distinguished scholar Christopher Lane tells the fascinating story of a society under strain as virtually all aspects of life changed abruptly.In deft portraits of scientific, literary, and intellectual icons who challenged the prevailing religious orthodoxy, from Robert Chambers and Anne Brontë to Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley, Lane demonstrates how they and other Victorians succeeded in turning doubt from a religious sin into an ethical necessity.The dramatic adjustment of Victorian society has echoes today as technology, science, and religion grapple with moral issues that seemed unimaginable even a decade ago. Yet the Victorians' crisis of faith generated a far more searching engagement with religious belief than the "new atheism" that has evolved today. More profoundly than any generation before them, the Victorians came to view doubt as inseparable from belief, thought, and debate, as well as a much-needed antidote to fanaticism and unbridled certainty. By contrast, a look at today's extremes--from the biblical literalists behind the Creation Museum to the rigidity of Richard Dawkins's atheism--highlights our modern-day inability to embrace doubt.

Marvin Trekker found an Ancient Magic Book, however he does not know how to use it. He must figure it out before the evil King Derfla, a dragon of bad intent, steals the book and begins a reign of well, really bad things. Only Marvin and his new best friend Alfred (a dragon filled with good things) can save the world. Join Marvin and his friends on an epic journey of adventure and discovery through the secrets of the Ancient Magic Book.