One Unique Token

In which I realize that, as sad as I am that she’s gone, anger fueled my fascination with Whitney Houston over the last 15 years; anger that replaced the unabashed pride that drove my childhood as a Whitney fan.

I’ve loved oral histories for almost a decade, since Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller revived and revolutionized the format with the legendary “Live from New York: An Uncensored History of ‘Saturday Night Live.’” I spent much of last summer making my way through “Those Guys Have all the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,” Miller’s detailed look at the Worldwide Leader in Sports.

Since I discovered that mode of storytelling, I’ve longed for a lot of media institutions — NBC’s late-night television division, Rolling Stone magazine and the FOX network — to receive the oral-history treatment, including MTV.

So the fact that I’ve been looking so forward to “I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution,” the new book by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum chronicling the first network devoted to teens and their musical tastes, should not come as an earth-shattering shock.

I’ve spent a great deal of time reading profiles of the authors, previews and excerpts from the book — including this awesome piece from Pitchfork — and this link is to a nugget from NPR about the book, which came out on Oct. 27. I haven’t read it yet but can’t wait to crack it open and relive my days as a latchkey Millennial kid and learn more about the era of MTV that preceded my love for — and eventual loathing of — the network turned cultural monolith.