New Book Titles Added to The Social Poets Store

From Denny: Don't you just love Twitter sometimes? While looking for something else I stumbled upon some great book tweets and decided to place them in the blog store for your perusal. They are listed under the category of Literay and then News and Politics or you can just click on the links below. Wish I had more time to read as these blogs are taking up all my time these days. If anyone has read these, please feel free to offer a review and opinion!

Considering how many death threats President Obama is getting these days what these books talk about is timely. Bush had only 3,000 threats a year. Obama's threat level increased by 400%. One plot by an idiot white supremacist group was to rob a gun store, kill 88 black people, decapitate another 14 black people and then assassinate the first African-American President in American history. The Secret Service foiled this one among many. (The CIA does similar throughout its history. Not everything they do is odious.)

Most reasons we never hear about these attempts is because the Secret Service and CIA are concerned about unoriginal types who will play copycat if the storyline is provided easily to them. What they lack in imagination they make up for in brutal stupidity and rash decisions.

During Obama's inauguration did you count the number of counter-sniper teams and other security detail along the parade route like I did? I was pleased to see such a high security presence and this book discusses just how much organization it takes to thwart the destructive elements of society. It also exposes how much the Bush administration ruined the Secret Service by placing it under Homeland Security and denying enough agents to carry out their mission properly. (Read that as they cut the budget.)

With the rise in Middle East terrorism affecting the rest of the globe this book on colonialism and its mentality is useful to understand today's politics. Americans are always hearing about the third world's anger toward the imperialists. This book offers up explanations and new insight.

Then there is a new book out of President John F. Kennedy, always an interesting person to read about even though his tenure at the White House was brief.

The write-ups that follow the book titles were quoted from Amazon.com.


In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect By Ronald Kessler: Never before has a journalist penetrated the wall of secrecy that surrounds the U.S. Secret Service, that elite corps of agents who pledge to take a bullet to protect the president and his family. After conducting exclusive interviews with more than one hundred current and former Secret Service agents, bestselling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler reveals their secrets for the first time.

Secret Service agents, acting as human surveillance cameras, observe everything that goes on behind the scenes in the president’s inner circle. Kessler reveals what they have seen, providing startling, previously untold stories about the presidents, from John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as about their families, Cabinet officers, and White House aides.

Kessler portrays the dangers that agents face and how they carry out their missions–from how they are trained to how they spot and assess potential threats. With fly-on-the-wall perspective, he captures the drama and tension that characterize agents’ lives.

In this headline-grabbing book, Kessler discloses assassination attempts that have never before been revealed. He shares inside accounts of past assaults that have put the Secret Service to the test, including a heroic gun battle that took down the would-be assassins of Harry S. Truman, the devastating day that John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and the swift actions that saved Ronald Reagan after he was shot.

While Secret Service agents are brave and dedicated, Kessler exposes how Secret Service management in recent years has betrayed its mission by cutting corners, risking the assassination of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and their families. Given the lax standards, “It’s a miracle we have not had a successful assassination,” a current agent says.

Since an assassination jeopardizes democracy itself, few agencies are as important as the Secret Service–nor is any other subject as tantalizing as the inner sanctum of the White House. Only tight-lipped Secret Service agents know the real story, and Ronald Kessler is the only journalist to have won their trust.

Cover via Amazon

An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 By Robert Dallek: An Unfinished Life is the first major, single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written by a historian in nearly four decades. Drawing upon previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives to tell Kennedy's story. We learn for the first time just how sick Kennedy was, what medications he took and concealed from all but a few, and how severely his medical condition affected his actions as President. We learn for the first time the real story of how Bobby was selected as Attorney General. Dallek reveals exactly what Jack's father did to help his election to the presidency, and he follows previously unknown evidence to show what path JFK would have taken in the Vietnam entanglement had he survived.

Dallek (LIFTS) JFK out of the gossips and back onto the world stage, showing that while he was the son of privilege, he faced great obstacles and fought on with remarkable courage. Never shying away from Kennedy's weaknesses, Dallek also brilliantly explores his strengths. The result is a portrait of a bold, brave, human Kennedy, once again a hero.


Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History By Frederick Cooper : In this closely integrated collection of essays on colonialism in world history, Frederick Cooper raises crucial questions about concepts relevant to a wide range of issues in the social sciences and humanities, including identity, globalization, and modernity. Rather than portray the past two centuries as the inevitable movement from empire to nation-state, Cooper places nationalism within a much wider range of imperial and diasporic imaginations, of rulers and ruled alike, well into the twentieth century. He addresses both the insights and the blind spots of colonial studies in an effort to get beyond the tendency in the field to focus on a generic colonialism located sometime between 1492 and the 1960s and somewhere in the "West." Broad-ranging, cogently argued, and with a historical focus that moves from Africa to South Asia to Europe, these essays, most published here for the first time, propose a fuller engagement in the give-and-take of history, not least in the ways in which concepts usually attributed to Western universalism--including citizenship and equality--were defined and reconfigured by political mobilizations in colonial contexts.

Cheeky Quote Day! 22 July 2009

Funny Quotes about unemployment and jobs from the Quote Garden.

Clown Photo by Tanzan @ flickr

From Denny: When the world is in chaos, the economy is confused and your 401K is now a 201K and descending, you just have to laugh about it all! Over at the Quote Garden site, bless their industrious little souls, they actually had a category for unemployment and another one for jobs quotes. I managed to cull out the lighter ones, enjoy!

We pretend to work because they pretend to pay us. ~ Author Unknown

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose your own. ~ President Harry S. Truman

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden. ~ Orson Scott Card

The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you're on the job. ~ Slappy White

Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses. ~ Cato the Elder

An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job. ~ Author Unknown

Unemployment diminishes people. Leisure enlarges them. ~ Mason Cooley
(Hmmm… is this guy telling us that now is a great time to lose weight???)

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work. ~ President John F. Kennedy
(Will someone please send this quote to the Republicans?)

When I quit working, I lost all sense of identity in about fifteen minutes. ~ Paige Rense

What is the good of being a genius if you cannot use it as an excuse for being unemployed? ~ Gerald Barzan

The number one sign you have nothing to do at work: The 4th Division of Paperclips has overrun the Pushpin Infantry and General White-Out has called for a new skirmish. ~ Fred Barling, "Humorscope"

Find a job you like and you add five days to every week. ~ H. Jackson Browne

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties. ~ Doug Larson

Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work. ~ Robert Orben

If a train station is where the train stops, what's a work station? ~ Author Unknown

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work. ~ John G. Pollard

Many people quit looking for work when they find a job. ~ Author Unknown

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B. ~ "Fats" Domino

Monday is a lame way to spend 1/7 of your life. ~ Author Unknown

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. ~ Howard Aiken

A Mission Statement is a dense slab of words that a large organization produces when it needs to establish that its workers are not just sitting around downloading Internet porn. ~ Dave Barry

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. ~ Arnold Toynbee

The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form. ~ Stanley J. Randall

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. ~ Douglas Adams

I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of privacy. ~ Danny McGoorty

Researchers at Harvard say that taking a power nap for an hour in the afternoon can totally refresh you. They say that by the time you wake up you'll feel so good, you'll be able to start looking for a new job. ~ Jay Leno

I've met a few people in my time who were enthusiastic about hard work. And it was just my luck that all of them happened to be men I was working for at the time. ~ Bill Gold

A baseball game is twice as much fun if you're seeing it on the company's time. ~ William C. Feather

Law of the Alibi: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire. ~ Author Unknown

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. ~ Niels Bohr

You're no good unless you are a good assistant; and if you are, you're too good to be an assistant. ~ Martin H. Fischer

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up. ~ Ogden Nash

Commuter - one who spends his life
In riding to and from his wife;
A man who shaves and takes a train,
And then rides back to shave again.
~ E.B. White, "The Commuter," Poems and Sketches, 1982

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office. ~ Robert Frost

The difference between a job and a career is the difference between forty and sixty hours a week. ~ Robert Frost

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. ~ C. Northcote Parkinson, 1958

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. ~ Dean Acheson
(Otherwise known as C.Y.A)

What is it that you like doing? If you don't like it, get out of it, because you'll be lousy at it. ~ Lee Iacocca

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. ~ Bertrand Russell

What the world really needs is more love and less paper work. ~ Pearl Bailey

Retired is being twice tired, I've thought
First tired of working,
Then tired of not.
~ Richard Armour

Statistics indicate that, as a result of overwork, modern executives are dropping like flies on the nation's golf courses. ~ Ira Wallach

I think my idea of retirement might be to one day work a 40-hour week. ~ Vince McMahon

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. ~ Robert Frost

The best time to start thinking about your retirement is before the boss does. ~ Author Unknown

Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas. ~ Paula Poundstone

If you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way. ~ Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

(Let's see: half-assed pay = half-assed work or the old proverb: If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.)


John F. Kennedy, Cheeky Quote Day, Orson Scott Card, Bertrand Russell, Dave Barry, United States, C. Northcote Parkinson, Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, the social poets, Denny Lyon, unemployment quotes, jobs quotes, Quote Garden, humor, funny quotes