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Summer Reading List 2026

Sure, summer isn’t quite over. But now is when I have the executive function to actually put this list together, so here we go. You’ll see a trend: short of one fiction book, this list is all nonfiction relating to presidential history. When I say I have read these books, full disclosure — I listen to them on Audible. I spend 90 minutes a day commuting, so that’s when I have a guaranteed block of time to consume information. Plus, if I’m doing chores or working with my hands at all, I like to listen to podcasts or books. This summer has been far and away my most voracious period of reading.

Grace

By: Cody Keenan

Reread. I first read this book in 2024. Grace outlines the 10 days in 2015 when the ACA, gay marriage, and a eulogy for slain members of a Black church in the South kept Mr. Keenan busy. Keenan at the time was President Obama’s chief speechwriter. The book is well written, full of personal stories, and it goes inside the mind of a writer — something I’m very interested in. Keenan draws on themes from The West Wing when he talks about the “blank page” and bouts of writer’s block.

Thanks, Obama

By: David Litt

This is my first reading of this book. Mr. Litt was a writer on the aforementioned Keenan’s speechwriting staff. Litt tells the story of his hero worship of then-candidate Obama and the realization that President Obama is just a human being with faults like anyone else. The book is light, and Litt writes in a way that keeps your attention and has you shaking your head at his metaphors with a smile.

Punk’s Force

By: Ward Carroll

This is a book in the Punk series, which follows a fictional F-14 and F/A-18 pilot who becomes commander of naval air forces. Mr. Carroll is a former F-14 RIO (back seat — think Goose in Top Gun) and writes from a place of knowledge about naval flight operations. The book follows an exercise between the Air Force and the Navy and works in modern themes like AI and defense budget cuts for piloted aircraft. Mr. Carroll also has a YouTube channel where he talks about all things naval aviation and defense news.

White House Usher

By: Christopher B. Emery

In this book, Mr. Emery talks about his time in the often misunderstood job of White House Usher. Emery started his career in IT and moved into the Usher’s Office during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. He served in that job until he was terminated by the Clinton White House because he provided Barbara Bush with tech support after she and her husband left the White House.

Within Arm’s Length

By: Dan Emmett

This book ended my early- and mid-summer foray into the Secret Service. Mr. Emmett was a Secret Service agent during the late ’80s and ’90s, and he writes in the “back in my day we weren’t so soft” voice of a man of his generation. While he provides some interesting stories, the book is too hell-bent on showing how cool he is because he was a Secret Service agent.

The Kennedy Detail

By: Gerald Blaine

This book tells the stories of the Secret Service agents who protected the Kennedys while John F. Kennedy was in the Oval Office. It doesn’t just focus on the events in Dallas in November of 1963; it takes a 30,000-foot view of what it was like to protect JFK and his family, the assassination itself, and the aftermath for the agents.

In the Secret Service

By: Jerry Parr

Mr. Parr was Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Division on the day in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan’s life was threatened outside a Washington, D.C., hotel. Parr threw President Reagan into the limo and discovered the wound the President had suffered. The book follows the events of that day, with interludes covering Parr’s path to the Secret Service and his life afterward working as a missionary helping AIDS patients in a convent founded by Mother Teresa. The book is well written, and I very much enjoyed it.

The Final Witness

By: Paul Landis

Secret Service Agent Paul Landis was part of a two-agent team dedicated to the protection of Jackie Kennedy. Mr. Landis writes in a light and witty way that allows you, as the reader, to follow along with a young man who was working a dream job that turned into a nightmare in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Mr. Landis tells the heartbreaking story of driving Mrs. Kennedy to a waiting helicopter that took her to the hospital to deliver her son, Patrick, who died a few days later. Landis gave himself time to try to process the events in Dallas, and when he couldn’t process the trauma, he left the Secret Service.

20 Years in the Secret Service

By: Rufus Youngblood

First of all, this is the coolest author’s name on the entire Summer Reading List. Mr. Youngblood was in charge of Vice President LBJ’s detail that Friday in Dallas. When the shots rang out, he made sure the Vice President and his wife were protected traveling to the hospital and then to Air Force One, where LBJ took the oath of office. Youngblood became SAIC of the Presidential detail upon LBJ’s accession. While his time with LBJ is the highlight, Youngblood also writes about his life after protecting the Texan.

Five Presidents

By: Clint Hill

Reread. I have reread this book at least three times, and each time I find it more interesting than the last. Mr. Hill tells the story of his time in the Secret Service, from protecting President Eisenhower’s mother-in-law to the day he left the Service — mostly due to health issues from burying the trauma of being the agent who ran to the presidential car as shots rang out in Dallas.

Five Days in November

By: Clint Hill

Reread. This is my fourth reread of this book, which outlines that terrible November when Mr. Hill was SAIC of the First Lady’s detail — the awful moments in Dallas, the autopsy in Washington, and the funeral. Hill wrote the story with a passion and sadness that was infectious. I was born 20 years after those events unfolded, but Hill put me in his shoes in Dallas.

August 11, 2026
Remove and Block Edge Extensions via Powershell
As an IT Professional :tm: I am the defacto Director of IT for my family and friends. I enjoy this (unpaid) role because I try to help my “users” learn more about tech and how it can improve their every day life. Microsoft Edge, or, IE The Next Generation as I like to call it is powered by Chromium. Chrome and Edge share that in common, part of the Chromium engine allows for extensions. Google has a robust approval process thru the Chrome Extension store. Microsoft, eh, not so much.

It’s really easy for threat actors to fool a normal user into instaling an Edge Extension. Some of these mask themselves common applications and threaten the user that they are at risk. Which is true, but the malformed Edge Extenstion is the threat.

If users have a need / want for extensions they should just use Chrome. But, if they get one of these bad Edge extension, I created a pair of powershell scripts to remove any Edge extension and block installation of future Edge extensions.

Uninstall Edge Extensions:
```
# Close Edge first — files are locked while it runs
Get-Process msedge -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Stop-Process -Force
Start-Sleep -Seconds 3

$userData = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\Edge\User Data"

Get-ChildItem -Path $userData -Directory -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
    Where-Object { $_.Name -eq "Default" -or $_.Name -like "Profile *" } |
    ForEach-Object {
        $extPath = Join-Path $_.FullName "Extensions"
        if (Test-Path $extPath) {
            Write-Host "Clearing extensions in $($_.Name)"
            Remove-Item -Path "$extPath\*" -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
        }
    }
```
Block any Edge Extension install in the future:
```
$key = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\ExtensionInstallBlocklist"
New-Item -Path $key -Force | Out-Null
Set-ItemProperty -Path $key -Name "1" -Value "*"
gpupdate /force
```
July 17, 2026
Oh, so it’s Asthma?!

Or: How Andy got his breath back

Struggling to breath is just no fun. For my adult life I have struggled with breathing issues. I have always just attributed this to the fact I’m very overweight. It makes sense, right? Fat guy can’t breath doing things others are able to do.

I really started noticing this when golfing with my brother. We golfed every week and I got so into I was working out to improve my game. I lost weight, not a lot, but I did lose some. Even thought I lost ~30lbs the breathing didn’t improve, like at all. Walking up to each green to put was a chore that would cause my wheeze and would take me time to catch my breath. By hole 18 I was so tired sometimes I didn’t even finish the hole and would just give up. This didn’t matter if it was hot or cold, humid or dry.

Things started getting really bad in the past year and a half or so. I have started struggle to breath walking to the bathroom. In the morning it took me half an hour to build up the energy to get dressed. Some mornings I would be so winded in the shower I would gasp for breath and then swollow a bunch of water and choke. Those days would be more like an hour after waking before I got dressed.

Then the mucus, oh the mucus! So much of it, if mucus was currency I would be a rich man. Every cough, and there were a lot of coughs, would bring up mucus.

All I described above was the norm for me. I still assumed it was because I was overweight so I never sought treatment.

2026, The Year of the Garden

When I married a Master Gardner I knew we’d have a garden. I knew I would be drafted into service helping where I could be helpful. What I didn’t calculate was just how much I enjoy growing something from nothing. That’s a topic for a whole other blog post but suffice to say I very much enjoy being outside working around pollen, dust, and sometimes even smoke.

All the work outside caused me to have what I thought was a broncittis type infection at least 4 times so far in 2026. I was (un)lucky enough to have one during my annual wellness exam. I told my Doctor about the breathing issues and he told me that they’d treat my infection and if my breathing didn’t get better he would send me for a Pulmonary Function Test but he didn’t seem that worried about my breathing. I took the meds and started to feel a bit better. Then, another episode causes me to message my doctor and ask for the PFT. I schedule it and reschedule it about 1800 times, thanks ADHD.

It’s late April and I’m about to turn 43 and I have the worst episode I’ve had for the longest amount of time. I had to call in a whole week of work and I even took flu and COVID tests. Finally, Mel talks me into going into an urgent care. The course of care is again meds I was given by my doc. I spend my birthday and the weekend before and the weekend after laid up at home debating multiple times if I should goto the ER.

“I just can’t see how I’m going to do this [the lack of breath] for another 30-40 years,” I tell my wife while struggling to even get that sentance out.

She gently suggests, like only she can, that I call and get my PFT back on the books. Now I’m committed. I can’t cancel. My next 30-40 years are on the line. I just found my person a year and a half ago and talked her into marrying me 5 months ago I can’t spend my time with her gasping for breath after I go pee or walk into the kitchen for a snack.

PFT day shows up and I’m not quite having an episode but it’s not great Bob. As the respitory tech walks us back to the PFT lab she hits me with:

“How long have had this wheeze and shortness of breath?”

This was just walking from the waiting room not even 200 steps to the PFT lab.

“Most of my adult life, really. But really bad in the last 2-3 years,” I tell her as my anexity goes thru the roof.

Part of the PFT is to give an inhaler to test how your lungs react to meds. When I took that inhaler I felt like a whole new man. It was like night and day. So much so I thought it might be a placebo effect. I get done with the battery of tests and the tech looks at the results.

“Have you ever been told you have Asthma?” she asks with a concerned look on her face. I tell her no and of course she can’t diagnose me but she can read a PFT after doing this for 25 years.

I make a doctors appointment with my primary care doc to talk about the PFT, even before the PFT results are back. We talk about my struggles and how the tech asked about Asthma and he finally perscribes me an inhaler to take as maintance and one to take when it’s really bad. The next day the pulmongist reads the PFT and has words like major obstruction and early stage damage.

In cases like this, to a certian extent, knowlege is not power. I google the key phrases I took out of the results and everything pointed to COPD. My Librarian bride also did a deep dive and concured that’s what it sounded like. My PCP looked at the pulminolgist’s comments and said he would be refering me to pulmonology.

Dealing with the fact I may have COPD as a 40 somthing never smoker was a little hard to swollow. The meds my PCP had me start were helping but I was already digging my grave before I talked to a pulmonogist.

With luck I almost never have the pulmonogy department called and they had an opening the same week! I could get my answers and treatment plan fast. This was both a relief and panic inducing all at the same time. What would I be told? I didn’t think I would be given XX number of months or years but I didn’t know if my hobbies would be doable.

At the hospital we spoke with the doctor and he told us that given my results and my weight I almost 100% had Asthma. Having all those bad results didn’t always mean COPD and didn’t have that. We talked about what inhalers to get and he put me on more modern verisons of what my PCP put me on. The meds would take about three weeks to really help.

I can breathe!

Now that the meds have really started to help I finally feel like I can do things I want to do. This weekend I hauled over 50 bags of dirt and 16 cinder blocks from my truck to the garden. It felt great. I now walk to the bathroom and don’t gasp when I get back to my chair.

I still have bad days, for sure. But, I now know those days are going to be less and less.

June 18, 2026
My AI Created Coat of Arms
Or put it another way, I’m a big fat nerd.

Been trying to play with different kinds of AI and keep my muscle memory of AI prompting. So I figured, why not create a coat of arms for myself and Melanie. You know, for fun. I’m not sure if others have fun like this but I sure had a lot of fun making this.

Let me walk you thru it:
- Suporters: Dexter side: Red Fawn Greyhound, in honor of America’s Favorite Sighthound ™ , Cedar. The Sinister side: Black cat, in honor of the 66% of our cats that are black and of course my childhood cat, Soot. Chose the “Sinister” side to show I don’t think black cats are bad luck.
- Crown: Brindel greyhound running, in honor of the late, much missed Otter
- Shield: Shows the three main flags of our heritage, Scotland,England and Canada. In the middle of the shield is a book opened to symbolize our thirst for knowlege and the fact Mel is a Librarian. On the Dexter side a Corn stalk peeks out to symbolize our love of plant life and gardening. Finally, on the sinister bottom a filed of Binary to symbolize our embracing technology and my job in IT.
- Compartment: Field of grass with clovers and small flowers. Most Compartment’s I’ve seen are just grass or something else but since we want a more “natural lawn” this is my way to show that.
- Motto: “Ad ominia animali ” in English means “For all things Animals” We chose this because we both know both of us would do anything for animals and would rather starve than our animals go hungry.
I made this with Google Flow and it took 1 main prompt followed by 5 corrections. Flow handled it like a pro.

Here is my first prompt:

Create a coat of arms. For Supporters on the sinister side have an outline of a common house cat, on the dexter a greyhound
for the field have a corn stalk for the charge have an opened book for the escutcheon have flags that merge into eachother from Scotland, England, and France
for the compartment have mount vert with clovers, under the compartment have the motto “Ad omnia animalia” that’s on a ribbon

Here is what it created at first:

I totally made a mistake because I said an “outline of a cat” at first I didn’t want a color of any kind of cat or greyhound because I didn’t want to leave anyone out. But I liked the look of the greyhound better. I also didn’t want a normal crown, but I didn’t tell it to exclude that. It missed the flag of France so I chose to change it Canada since that’s really where my maternal family comes from. From there I also chose to add the field of binaries on the left bottom of the shield. I also asked it to change the Greyhound to a red fawn and add a brendle running to the left as the “crown” it got a bit confused with that correction:

I then asked for the red fawn to be a bit lighter, to match Cedar’s coloring and tried to make it more clear I wanted the greyound running to be the length of the shield and running to the left. It did a good job on the sizing but still had it running towards the right so I pivoted to asking it to run towards the cat and it worked.

All in all I’m really happy with how it turned out and it didn’t take me that long to research the parts of a coat of arms and build the orginal prompt and make corrections. This was a fun little project that allowed me to learn more about image prompting with little to no stakes.
June 17, 2026
Well, hello!

###So Glad you found me, this is where I will post

My life can be pretty much summed up in this image above. I enjoy gardening, sim racing, and my animals. Most of all I enjoying sharing all of this and more with my wife, Melanie. This blog will be a place I can put my thoughts down on anything from Gardening, Sim Racing, Animals, AI, or anything else really. Welcome to the party!

June 15, 2026