A new book makes a rousing case for Whitney Houston. 7 key takeaways

Whitney Houston was loved; Whitney Houston was ridiculed.

For most of her life, the incomparable singer was forced to make sense of those intertwined realities. Even as she set towering records and moved mountains with her voice, she was judged at every turn by those who could never step into in her shoes.

While the love never left, the mockery grew louder in her later years as she fell victim to drug abuse before dying in 2012 at the age of 48.

"Didn't We Almost Have It All," a new book by Gerrick Kennedy, seeks to recontextualize Whitney's life, looking with compassion rather than scorn.

An award-winning journalist who covered music for the Los Angeles Times from 2009 to 2019, Kennedy makes no secret of his love for Houston throughout the book. In the introduction he remembers hearing her honey-soaked voice for the first time, tracing the way it shaped his musical identity while growing up in Cincinnati.