Mike Sacks' 'Poking a Dead Frog' cracks the comedy code

Comedy is having a moment. You can't really talk about the vaunted New Golden Platinum Age of Television without reference to Louis C.K., Amy Schumer or Amy Poehler. Political discourse takes cues from Jon Stewart and John Oliver. The Internet, which drives the world, is three-quarters comedy. (Figure approximate.) Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling write memoirs that also serve as manifestos, and the Children of Apatow sew their seeds through the culture, on multiple platforms.

We are also in a time when the nuts and bolts of show business have come to be regarded as entertainment in their own right. On television series like Jim Rash's “The Writers' Room” and David Steinberg's “Inside Comedy”; Web series such as Jerry Seinfeld's “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” and Paul F. Tompkins' “Speakeasy”; on Scott Aukerman's “Comedy Bang Bang” and Marc Maron's “WTF” podcasts; and in the course of innumerable public panels, video chats and Reddit AMAs, the curtain is pulled back on the creative process.

Like its predecessor, “Dead Frog” offers learned advice for the aspiring comedy writer, with sections headed “Pure, Hardcore Advice” and “Ultraspecific Comedic Knowledge” alternating with longer interviews. (Some are just shorter, narrowly conceived interviews; a few seem to have been written by the subjects themselves; Sacks also includes the show “bible” Paul Feig wrote for “Freaks and Geeks”; Bill Hader's list of “200 Essential Movies Every Comedy Writer Should See”; and the sample sketches Todd Levin submitted in 2008 for a job on Conan O'Brien's “Late Night,” with his own current critique attached.

The respondents represent a wide range of generations and mediums -- print, radio, film and, most frequently, television -- but this is overall a cavalcade of white men, a flaw in a survey otherwise wide-ranging. Among the women included are Poehler, Diablo Cody, cartoonist Roz Chast and former Onion editor in chief (now TV writer) Carol Kolb and, for me, the book's great revelation, 96-year-old Peg Lynch, the creator, writer, star and copyright owner of “Ethel and Albert,” a presciently modern radio and then a TV show of which I had no previous knowledge. But humorists of color are conspicuously absent.

The subjects include Mel Brooks, not just telling the usual stories; sitcom guru James L. Brooks, who believes that “Writing dignifies any turmoil it puts you through”; rarely interviewed “National Lampoon” co-founder Henry Beard; Monty Python's Terry Jones; James Downey, who co- created “Saturday Night Live's” Wild and Crazy Guys and the David Letterman “Top 10”; short-fiction writer George Saunders; graphic novelist Daniel Clowes; “Lemony Snicket” alter ego Daniel Handler; Bob Elliott, the Bob of Bob and Ray; Peter Mehlman, who coined “yada yada yada” and “double dip” for “Seinfeld”; Will Ferrell partner-in-crime Adam McKay; and “Parks and Recreation” writer Megan Amram, whose career began in Twitter, where she “started writing with the single goal to make myself a better writer and then, later, to get a job.”

Sacks is above all a fan, but he's also a well-informed one. He asks productive, genuinely interested, insightful questions throughout, and, just as important, good follow-up questions: When “Parks and Recreation's” Mike Schur talks about David Foster Wallace or James L. Brooks brings up Paddy Chayevsky, he doesn't need clarification, but knows the territory, and lights out for it.