Christianson, Stephen G. 1963(?)-2005

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CHRISTIANSON, Stephen G. 1963(?)-2005

PERSONAL: Born c. 1963, in Maracaibo, Venezuela; died of a heart attack January 20, 2005, in Fairfax, VA; son of Geryld B. (in the foreign service) and Sue S. Christianson. Education: Oberlin College, graduated 1984; Marshall-Wythe School of Law, College of William and Mary, J.D., 1987.

CAREER: Attorney and author. Practiced law in Fairfax, VA and Washington, DC; full-time writer, beginning 1994.

WRITINGS:

One Hundred Ways to Avoid Common Legal Pitfalls without a Lawyer, Carol Publishing Group (Secaucus, NJ), 1992.

How to Administer an Estate: A Step-by-Step Guide for Families and Friends, Carol Publishing Group (Secaucus, NJ), 1993, 5th revised edition, Career Press (Franklin Lakes, NJ), 2004.

Business Law Made Simple, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1995.

Facts about the Congress, H.W. Wilson (New York, NY), 1996.

The American Book of Days, 4th revised edition, H.W. Wilson (New York, NY), 2000.

The International Book of Days, edited by Lynn M. Messina, H.W. Wilson (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor and consulting legal editor, Great American Trials, edited by Edward W. Knappman, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994, 2nd edition, 2002. Contributor to American Jurisprudence.

SIDELIGHTS: Stephen G. Christianson was born in Venezuela to foreign-service parents and lived most of his life in Fairfax, Virginia. A lawyer by profession, he turned to writing in the mid-1990s, and until his death in 2004 wrote a number of volumes on law geared for the lay person.

In addition to his books on legal matters, Christianson also produced the fourth edition of The American Book of Days, a work first published in 1937 and previously revised in 1978. The book's 1,000-plus entries are arranged by day of occurrence, and Christianson's edition includes the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the initiation of Operation Desert Storm, the attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In addition to new entries, existing material has been updated, and new appendices added.

A Booklist contributor noted that this book "has grown into an idiosyncratic mixture—the 1828 duel between John Randolph and Henry Clay shares a page with the 1994 death of Kurt Cobain; Captain Kidd's hanging is given as much space as John F. Kennedy's assassination."

Also compiled by Christianson, The International Book of Days is a companion volume that contains approximately 1,500 entries, some of which, like the ratification of the Bill of Rights, are relevant to U.S. history. American band leader Glenn Miller's disappearance while flying over the English Channel is noted, as is the debut of Beethoven's first symphony. Reviewer's Bookwatch contributor John Burroughs called the reference "unique and useful."