Humor sells. Humor convinces. Humor instructs. Humor entertains. Humor communicates. Whether your audience numbers one or one thousand, humor is the ideal vehicle to capture interest, attention, and approval. But it has to be the short, dynamic humor of today—not the long-winded stories and anecdotes that amused our grandparents. One-liners get the laughs and carry the message because they are so easily quotable. A good one-liner makes its point in less time than it takes a story just to establish a premise. 2400 Jokes to Brighten Your Speeches gives you an invaluable working file of these effective, topical zingers. Written by Bob Orben, one of America’s top comedy writers, they are as relevant and timely as tomorrow’s headlines. Beyond all that, they are fun just to read. Take a laugh break and scan a few pages in idle moments. It’ll add to your joke memory, brighten your speeches, and brighten your day.

Good news! America’s master wordsmith strikes again with a new collection of erudite, witty, provocative, sometimes barbed, frequently hilarious “On Language” columns. Published in The New York Times and syndicated in more than three hundred other newspapers, these opinions from the “Supreme Court of Current English Usage” cover everything from the bottom line on tycoonese and the accesses* of computerese to portmanteau words like televangelist and Draconomics (the language maven’s own plan for our bloated economy). Although Safire makes an admirable case for adverbs and adjectives, advocates of strong verbs will be heartened to hear that he also: pleads for the preservation of the subjunctive mood; delivers, hot off the college campus, the latest lingo in which ‘rents means parents and yesterday’s wimps are today’s squids; decries the brevity-is-next-to-godliness literary school; bids farewell to anxiety (it’s been replaced by trendy stress or swangst); noodles over such weighty geopolitical questions as “when an intercept of a fighter is a buzz”; bemoans the loss of roughage to fiber; and rides herd over the language spoken in Marlboro Country. More good news! Safire again spices his own wit and wisdom with correspondence from Lexicographic irregulars, those zealous readers and letter writers who reply to his columns with praise, scorn, corrections and nitpicks—anything to match wits with Super-maven. If You Could Look It Up and Take My Word for It occupy prominent spots in your bookcase, then Language Maven Strikes Again belongs there too. If they don’t, then begin with this Safire and work your way back. *That’s not a typo—that’s a pun.

Offering step-by-step, practical instruction, not ssscholarly theory, on how to deal with all of the important aspects of public speaking, Simmons begins by explaining how to analyze the audience, demonstrates the importance of appealing to their interests, and then walks speakers through every aspect of writing the scripts.