one of my favorite books about comics

The Comic Book Heroes: From the Silver Age to the Present by Will Jabobs and Gerard Jones.  I bought this book when I was a kid and DEVOURED it.  It was the first history of the comic book heroes I ever read, and it was so intensely fascinating, I can't even put in to words how valuable this volume was to my young comic-reading mind.  Its history only began with the Silver Age, but I wasn't complaining; up until this book, the only history I got to experience was issues of Marvel Saga and reprint comics.  Highly recommended then and now.