Scroll down to watch an interview with author Maria Sherman.

There may be no Rock and Roll Book Club pick this year that The Current's Morning Show producer Anna Weggel was more excited for than Maria Sherman's Larger Than Life: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS (buy now). I had to Slack her, though, when I reached page 71.

Were Hanson a one-hit wonder? "Obviously," writes Sherman. "Name a Hanson tune that is not 'MMMBop.'"

Anna shot straight back. "Madeline. Where Did Johnny Go. I'll Be With You In Your Dreams. (About their grandma.) Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. (Their Xmas album is perfect.)"

In fact, Hanson cracked the Top Ten once more, with "I Will Come To You." So not technically a one-hit wonder, but I can only imagine that if Sherman reads this she'll be proud of our diligent devotion to Anna's favorite boy band. (I'm more of a Directioner.)

Larger Than Life is a fun read, a bright large-format paperback generously illustrated by Alex Fine. Whether it's a nostalgia trip or a list of your current favorite artists, it's a no-brainer gift for any boy band fan in your life.

It's not just a light flip-through, though: Sherman has some serious points to make about the importance of boy bands, especially in what Sasha Geffen calls going "beyond the binary." In their fascinating Glitter Up the Dark, Geffen extensively describes the Beatles' challenging gender norms (with their famously floppy haircuts and "homosocial" relationships); Sherman also credits the Fab Four with being a proto-boy-band, and as her history proceeds, gender recedes. Ultimately the history reaches BTS, the K-pop group whose RM is pictured in a genderless boudoir robe. "There are no limits to what those artists can do within that androgyny," writes Sherman.

Not that you'd call the average Western boy band androgynous, as Sherman acknowledges. However, boy bands tend to be kept carefully un-partnered (in the case of the Jonas Brothers, even rocking "purity rings") — allowing their predominantly female fans to either imagine themselves with their pop idols, or to imagine those idols with each other. The practice of "shipping" — imagining band members pairing off romantically — went virtually mainstream in the case of One Direction, whose queer fans have created an entire organization called Rainbow Direction.

The question of what, exactly, makes a group a "boy band" is somewhat subjective. According to Sherman, the term somehow originated in 1980s Germany; she regards New Kids On the Block as the first contemporary boy band, having been manufactured for pop success and going on to achieve it. Her predecessors range from Franz Liszt (kind of a stretch) to New Edition, the previous project from NKOTB impresario Maurice Starr.

After New Edition fired Starr in 1984, the producer set out to replicate their success — but this time, with white boys. The concept was so similar, New Kids On the Block were initially marketed to black radio, the thought being that the Boston boys would "cross over" to mainstream pop. That strategy didn't work, but when pop radio found the band anyway...bingo. Their sophomore album, Hangin' Tough, went platinum seven times over.

In one of a series of "Style Watch" illustrations, Sherman breaks down Joey McIntyre's look from the "Hangin' Tough" video — replete with a leather jacket covering his smiley-face shirt ("because the smile was probably a little too inviting to leave fully exposed"), acid-wash jeans ("lest you forget the era"), and that remarkable black top hat with the crown missing so as to set the singer's "curly locks free of their prison."

Sherman's history tracks the transition from NKOTB to the twin titans: Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, both founded by the ultra-sketchy Lou Pearlman with money he made on shady blimp shenanigans. (The boy band version of Straight Outta Compton would truly be wild.) "Where there's Coke, there's Pepsi," Pearlman told the New Yorker. "Someone's going to come along and do the Backstreet Boys' knockoff, so why shouldn't it be us?"

*NSYNC initially took their moniker from the last letters of the first names of the boys in the band: Jason Galasso, Chris Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone, Justin Timberlake, and JC Chasez. When Galasso bailed early on, his replacement intially went by the name Lansten Bass so the acronym would still work. Their label tried to get Pearlman to change the name and fire Bass, who "couldn't manage to match his feet to the beat if his dreams depended on it," but as we know, "neither happened."

The Backstreet Boys remain the biggest-selling boy band, moving over 78 million copies of albums like the behemoth Millennium. As Sherman notes, the BSB/*NSYNC era coincided with the commercial peak of the music industry, when there was so much money in music that kids (or their parents) would pay $3.99 for a Hit Clips disc containing just one minute of a boy band anthem. By that standard, $20 a CD seemed like a bargain, even if it had "ten tracks of near-filler," as Sherman characterizes Millennium.

Paging through Larger Than Life, you may be surprised just how many hitmaking boy bands there have been in the past four decades. The book discusses Menudo (a band that ruthlessly kicked its members out at the age of 16), 98 Degrees (featuring "Jessica Simpson's future husband Nick Lachey"), Dream Street (featuring COVID-19 casualty Chris Trousdale), O-Town (a product of reality TV show Making the Band), Take That (one of several successful U.K. boy bands), BBMak (Christian Burns, Mark Barry, and Stephen McNally), Big Time Rush (whose Nickelodeon show was set in Minnesota), the Wanted (I guess I never thought of "Glad You Came" as a double entendre before), 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS is pronounced "five-sauce," not "5-S-O-S," we learn), and Big Bang, the K-pop group that laid the groundwork for BTS's global takeover.

Of course, there were also plenty you may not remember; among them Aventura (bachata greats), C-Note (Lou Pearlman's Latinx project), B2K ("Boys of the New Millennium"), the Meaty Cheesy Boys (the quintet behind "U + Me = Us [Calculus]"), East 17 (not to be confused with '80s synthpop band Heaven 17, though also British), Boyzone ("a band built exclusively of Gilmore Girls’ Jess Mariano types"), 5ive (pronounced just like you think it is), Westlife ("the ugliest band I have ever seen," said Simon Cowell), Mindless Behavior ("if Kidz Bop had some soul"), and the Vamps (their guitarist once dated Game of Thrones star and current Jonas spouse Sophie Turner).

Along the way, Sherman includes features like a boy-band member typology (the heartthrob, the bad boy, the cute one, the responsible one, the shy one); "Conspiracy Corners" (have Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson been secretly dating for years?); and "Tech Tochs" (no boy-band book would be complete without mention of TRL).

At the end, Sherman looks into the future and names some groups that might become the next big boy-band sensations. In fact, some of them already are: like Brockhampton, the sprawling hip-hop collective that's most often "tasked with the title of 'cutting-edge boy band.'" It's hard work...but someone's got to do it.

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Upcoming Rock and Roll Book Club picks

Tune in to The Current at 8:30 a.m. (Central) every Wednesday morning to hear Jay Gabler and Jill Riley talk about a new book. Also, find Jay's reviews online.

August 12: Knock! Knock! Knock! On Wood: My Life In Soul by Eddie Floyd (buy now)

August 19: And In the End: The Last Days of the Beatles by Ken McNab

August 26: Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture by Hannah Ewens (buy now)

September 2: If You See Me: My Six-Decade Journey in Rock and Roll by Pepé Willie (buy now)