Most Popular Books by John OBrien

A simple introduction to the game of baseball, covering its equipment, players, and basic plays. The illustrations show a game in progress.

Steve Jobs, adopted in infancy by a family in San Francisco, packed a lot of life into fifty-six short years. In this Who Was.? biography, children will learn how his obsession with computers and technology at an early age led him to co-found and run Apple, in addition to turning Pixar into a ground-breaking animation studio. A college dropout, Jobs took unconventional steps in his path to success and inspired the best and the brightest to come with him and "change the world."

Born to a family of farmers, Lincoln stood out from an early age—literally! (He was six feet four inches tall.) As sixteenth President of the United States, he guided the nation through the Civil War and saw the abolition of slavery. But Lincoln was tragically shot one night at Ford's Theater—the first President to be assassinated. Over 100 black-and-white illustrations and maps are included.

Do you know how many things in your daily life were invented by accident? Their unusual tales, along with hilarious cartoons and weird, amazing facts, make up this fun-filled book about everyday items that had surprisingly haphazard beginnings.

As a kid, Jackie Robinson loved sports. And why not? He was a natural at football, basketball, and, of course, baseball. But beyond athletic skill, it was his strength of character that secured his place in sports history. In 1947 Jackie joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the long-time color barrier in major league baseball. It was tough being first- not only did "fans" send hate mail but some of his own teammates refused to accept him. Here is an inspiring sports biography, with black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Like Michelangelo, Galileo is another Renaissance great known just by his first name--a name that is synonymous with scientific achievement. Born in Pisa, Italy, in the sixteenth century, Galileo contributed to the era's great rebirth of knowledge. He invented a telescope to observe the heavens. From there, not even the sky was the limit! He turned long-held notions about the universe topsy turvy with his support of a sun-centric solar system. Patricia Brennan Demuth offers a sympathetic portrait of a brilliant man who lived in a time when speaking scientific truth to those in power was still a dangerous proposition. Born in Pisa, Italy, in the sixteenth century, Galileo contributed to the era's great rebirth of knowledge, despite intense political and religious opposition. Galileo is known as the father of modern science.

A biography of the eighteenth-century printer, publisher, inventor, scientist, and statesman who played an influential role in the early history of the United States.

One day in 1882, Thomas Edison flipped a switch that lit up lower Manhattan with incandescent light and changed the way people live ever after. The electric light bulb was only one of thousands of Edison's inventions, which include the phonograph and the kinetoscope, an early precursor to the movie camera. As a boy, observing a robin catch a worm and then take flight, he fed a playmate a mixture of worms and water to see if she could fly! Here's an accessible, appealing biography with 100 black-and-white illustrations.

As the world now knows, Barack Obama has made history as our first African-American president. With black-and-white illustrations throughout, this biography is perfect for primary graders looking for a longer, fuller life story than is found in the authorÆs bestselling beginning reader Barack Obama: United States President.

In 1775, Paul Revere of Boston made his now-famous horseback ride warning colonists of an impending attack by the British. This event went largely unnoticed in history until Longfellow celebrated it in a poem in 1861. So who was Paul Revere? In addition to being an American patriot, he was a skilled silversmith and made false teeth from hippo tusks! This biography, with black-and-white illustrations throughout, brings to life Paul Revere's thrilling ride as well as the personal side of the man and the exciting times in which he lived.

This interdisciplinary collection examines the notion of sedition in the period of the French Wars of Religion (1560?1600) and focuses not only on France itself, but also on Scotland during the reign of the French-born Mary Queen of Scots. Composed of eleven chapters written by an international team of experts, this volume concentrates on the political aspects of sedition rather than religious heresy, and covers writings and publications in a wide range of fields: politics, history, law, literature, and gender. A complementary feature of this collection is the spectrum of writings studied; they include edicts and treatises, pamphlets, broadsides, legal documents, dialogues, and satirical prose and poetry. Several chapters also address visual representations of sedition.0An Introduction and a Conclusion provide synthetic analyses of the material studied in the individual chapters.

"Muslim reflection on the Cross is dominated by the notion of a substitute being crucified in Jesus' place - something never mentioned in the Qur'an. Reliant on repetition of decontextualized, lexicographical readings, it does scant justice to the spiritual depth and hermeneutical finesse of the Qur'an. Failing to note the ironic trope of the text, it conceptualizes the supremacy of God in merely this-worldly terms, reducing divine mystery to the mythical and the banal. Far from explaining Qur'an 4:157, Substitutionism obscures and distorts it."