“Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything”By Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (Simon & Schuster, 307 pages, $26)

It’s not as if “Seinfeld” didn’t have its critics. Writing in New York magazine, John Leonard called the show a “Cheez Doodle of urban fecklessness.” The New Republic’s longtime literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, a professional lowerer of the boom, said it was “the worst, last gasp of Reaganite, grasping, materialistic, narcissistic, banal self-absorption.” Newman, the show’s villain, reduced these sentiments to two words: “Hello, Jerry.”

For many of us, though, “Seinfeld” was and is, in reruns, a dependable pleasure, an “I Love Lucy” or “The Honeymooners” for our time. This sitcom, which ran from 1989 to 1998, was topical and smart. Recall, if you will, that “Alf” was a hit when “Seinfeld” was conceived. It was genuinely funny, dry as a good vermouth, eminently quotable and — yada, yada, yada — here is an intelligent book about it.

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong is a former staffer at Entertainment Weekly, whose books include a history of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” In “Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything,” she delivers a solid history of the series, beginning with two largely unknown stand-up comedians, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, cracking jokes in a Korean deli in 1988 and realizing: This kind of banter could be a show.

And Armstrong can write. Here is her precise description of the two men at the time: “Seinfeld had dark hair blown dry into the classic ’80s pouf, while David maintained a magnificent Jew-fro, dented a bit in the middle by his receding hairline. Seinfeld’s delivery often ascended to a high-pitched warble; David favored a guttural grumble that could become a yell without warning.”

Her book, as if she were a marine biologist, is a deep dive. She has interviewed the show’s writers; its directors; its bit players; even the creator of its theme music, Jonathan Wolff, whose composition made him, in the author’s words, “the most famous slap-bass player since Bootsy Collins.”

Armstrong has an eye for detail. The actors who auditioned for the part of George Costanza, the role made famous by Jason Alexander, included Nathan Lane, Danny DeVito and Steve Buscemi. Remember the episode about Elaine’s horrible, spasmodic dance moves? One of the show’s writers composed it after watching Lorne Michaels try to shake it at a “Saturday Night Live” after-party.

I’d forgotten, if I had ever known, that the character of Elaine’s father — a gruff writer and war veteran named Alton Benes, who hated the pink lining of Jerry’s expensive jacket — was based on novelist Richard Yates (“Revolutionary Road”). David knew Yates because he had dated the novelist’s daughter. After the episode aired, Yates was reported to have said about David, “I’d like to kill that son of a bitch!”

Speaking of writers, Armstrong notes that Alfred Kazin found “Seinfeld” to be a poor representation of Jewish culture (he felt the same way about Philip Roth’s novels) because it didn’t deal with a relationship to God.

Armstrong’s book builds to an argument that we all now live in the world that “Seinfeld” made, an argument that would give Wieseltier hives. Her term for this world is Seinfeldia. Part of this argument is based on the show’s position as a clear forerunner of today’s golden age of television.

David Chase’s concept for “The Sopranos” — “a mobster in therapy, having problems with his mother” — scans like a “Seinfeld” pitch, she writes. The narrative complexity of “Seinfeld,” the way three or four plot strands were woven into one resonating ending, inspired the creators of shows like “The Office,” “West Wing” and “30 Rock.”

Part of her argument, too, is that the show has cultural staying power. There are “Seinfeld” emoji and video games. “Seinfeld” scenes and catchphrases pop into your head several times a day — so often that, quite a long time ago, they became clichés, uncool to utter aloud. The man who cannot eat a tortilla chip without delighting himself by making a reference to double-dipping is the man disinvited to your next Oscars party.

Fans of the show “can go to a college campus celebration of Festivus, the fictional holiday ‘Seinfeld’ introduced, and even turn on the TV to find an earnest Fox News host debating the merits of Festivus as if our country’s future depended on it,” Armstrong writes. “They can attend a med school class in which students solemnly diagnose ‘Seinfeld’ characters’ mental illnesses.”

These sorts of arguments — that we are living in the world that X made — have become coma-inducing. X can be solved for anyone and anything: Betty Boop, Betty Crocker, Henry Ford, Hedda Hopper, Bo Diddley, Twiggy, Daniel Ellsberg, Boris Johnson.

The reasons to come to “Seinfeldia” are its carefully marshaled history lesson and Armstrong’s way of laying out her produce as if she were operating a particularly good stall at a farmer’s market.

She reminds us that Stanley Kubrick was such a fan of the show that he had tapes sent to him in England. About why the name Kramer worked best for Michael Richards’ character, she writes, “That plosive consonant K sound is known to be among the English language’s funniest phonemes.”

I haven’t watched “Seinfeld” reruns for a while. I overdosed years ago and went cold turkey. Perhaps the highest praise I can give “Seinfeldia” is that it made me want to buy a loaf of marbled rye and start watching again, from the beginning.