Tony Schwartz, creator of the “Daisy” commercial, died this past week. Schwartz will long be remembered for his insights into communication, namely the power of emotion and the role of ads to surface feelings from the audience rather than to educate the audience with facts. I made the pilgrimage to Schwartz’ compound upper West Side Manhattan compound in 1985, where he was nice enough to further elaborate for me the theories from his book “The Responsive Chord.” Anyone who is serious about being a master communicator should watch all of Tony’s old TV commercials as well as read his books.

Speaking of Roger Ailes, he truly is the matter of the sound bite, especially when there is invective involved. If you want a weekly or daily tutorial on great sound bites, do what I do, I have set up a free Google news alert to send me an email every time Roger Ailes is mentioned in the media. Typically, I am rewarded with some golden nugget where Ailes has skewered some hapless CNN or CNBC executive. I might not agree with Ailes very often, but you can’t challenge his status as king of the sound bite.

“Dark Genius” is a new book out about the life and times of Roger Ailes, the longtime GOP political operative and Fox News Channel founder. The book isn’t great, but Ailes life is so fascinating, it almost doesn’t matter. If you are interested in media, politics, and communication, you really can’t go wrong learning more about Roger Ailes. The book earned its place at the pool this summer.