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Midway through Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes, film critic Saul Austerlitz cites a classic line about the difficulty of music criticism: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Of course, the reader can apply the same logic to Austerlitz's attempt at a critical history of the music video. Thankfully, he handles the challenge admirably.

Money for Nothing scans the development of the music video form, from its early 20th century roots in musical shorts shown before feature films, through the birth of the modern music-video era with the 1981 launch of MTV. Austerlitz delves into mid-century music-video incarnations such as Scopitones, which played on audio jukeboxes in nightclubs and restaurants, right up to today's low-budget videos by emerging acts, which to some extent have replaced expensive productions by established superstars as the face of the form, thanks to the rise of Internet sites like YouTube and MySpace.

Austerlitz analyzes hundreds of videos, from Run D.M.C. and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" and Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" to Weezer's "Buddy Holly" and Eminem's "Mosh," showing how each one responds to its era's trends and clichés. The impulse to wax nostalgic that results is a big part of the fun of this book; you can't help but smile, thinking back on Simon LeBon and his bandmates wearing sunglasses indoors in Duran Duran videos, or Beavis & Butt-head's take on Amy Grant's "Baby Baby" video (Butt-head: "Is this a Clearasil commercial?"), or Christopher Walken dancing madly through a sleek-'n'-sterile hotel lobby in Spike Jonze's video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice."

Ultimately, the book's effort at comprehensive analysis becomes its biggest weakness. Austerlitz offers what are essentially short, critical essays for each video, and eventually, the book begins to read like a Leonard Maltin movie guide. Austerlitz might have been well advised to follow the Maltin model, presenting his music-video reviews in an encyclopedia format, which he could have accompanied with just a few essays about music-video history and the form's more eminent directors. Late in the book, Austerlitz lauds Beavis & Butt-head for their critical chops, calling their music-video critiques "the best things anyone ever said on the subjects in question," primarily for their efficiency -- their ability to use "5 words where other, more intellectually gifted critics would require 1000." Austerlitz would have done well to heed those words a little more consistently, but this is really a minor quibble. In the end, this is a book about music videos, one of the sweetest, fun-to-consume confections pop culture has to offer -- and what's not to like about that?