O.K., after all these years I have still not bought this book by Gerard J. Waggett.

Can someone tell me, honestly, how good it is?

Does the author write the histories with a critical analyses, similar to Christopher Schemering's book, or simply tell what happened on the shows?

There was a book I paged through (but did not buy) back in the late 90s, which had entries for each soap opera, but they were divided into sections. For instance, the OLTL entry had the names of families like The Lords and The Buchanans, then a little description. This format did not appeal to me, and I have struggled to remember for years whether that was the Soap Opera Encyclopedia or something else.

Can someone give a brief summary of what this book entails?

The book you described is not the third edition of the Soap Opera Encyclopedia. That book is essentially the same format as the first two, but not as good.

It's very very good but yeah it works best as a companion to the second edition (1987) of Schemering's Soap Opera Encyclopedia. (So sad he commited suicide soon after). Waggert's does give that book credit but in many ways he copied things outright. Still, partlybecause it goes ten years later, the 19987 book is invaluable. Also they list characters alphabetically (with their actors) by FIRST NAME which is SOO much easier--Schemering liste d them chronologically which when you're simply trying to find out what's the last nme of a character you saw on a youtube clip isn't very helpful.

But yes Waggertt writes the histories pretty much the same format as Schemering--they're not strict show story histories by any means.

Either way it's definetly not the book you thumbed through

Now I'm curious what the 1990s book you thumbed through was...

It's interesting. I used to read it over and over again like the Bible and can usually recall random soap facts at random. It's cool. A few errors in facts and grammar but it's a good guide.