Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community

The form is so elemental, so basic, that we have difficulty imagining a time before it existed: a single set, fixed cameras, canned laughter, zany sidekicks, quirky family antics. Obsessively watched and critically ignored, sitcoms were a distraction, a gentle lullaby of a kinder, gentler America—until suddenly the artificial boundary between the world and television entertainment collapsed.

In this book we can watch the growth of the sitcom, following the path that leads from Lucy to The P...