Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, by James A. Miller and Tom Shales
This ended up being sort of compulsively readable; lots of dirt, good backstage anecdotes from and about many people that I find funny. The book ran aground a couple of times when I wanted it to go deeper than I guess the people they spoke to were willing to go, but that's the nature of an oral history. Someone probably had to edit the shit out of it just to keep it down to one volume. In the end it was more fun for me to read about the older casts, since that's when I was really watching the show. I wanted more Gilda and Laraine and Jane, and more about Phil Hartman. And there was no Eddie Murphy at all, he didn't want to be interviewed. I don't know much about the latest crew, though I was surprised to find that Jimmy Fallon sounds like such a butthead.