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Historian. As a young man Mark Sullivan was vastly impressed by the late Harry Thurston Peck's brilliant history of the contemporary U. S., Twenty Years of the Republic (1885-1905). Years later after seeing many a U. S. political event from the inside, Journalist Sullivan began to read accounts of some of them and say to himself, "That was not the way it happened." History, he concluded, can never be rightly written from documents alone. Too much happens behind the scenes, too much is decided by a passing word or nod of the head, too many varying accounts are put forward by self-justifying participants. In September 1923 Mark Sullivan hired his secretary's brother as assistant, set out to carry on approximately where Twenty Years of the Republic had left off. In the enormous task which he had set himself, Historian Sullivan's first move was to thumb through the newspapers of the time, rake over his own memories and mementoes. Next he consulted available documents—biographies, magazine articles, stenographic reports, the Congressional Record. Photographs, drawings, cartoons he culled from the files of old magazines. When each chapter was finished, he had 50 copies of it printed, sent them around for correction, addition, criticism to surviving participants in the events concerned. Sifting his replies, he used some in revising his text, sprinkled others in a multitude of fascinating footnotes. Author Sullivan estimates the number of his voluntary collaborators at close to 100,000. Portentous is the first of their contributions to appear, on page 40 of Vol. I, published in 1926. It is embodied in a footnote dropped from a sentence beginning: "The American temperament included adaptiveness, a willingness more prompt than among other peoples to dismiss the old and try the new. . . ." The footnote: "Mr. Herbert Hoover thinks this point should be emphasized. . . ." "The Twenties." Like its five best selling predecessors, "The Twenties" is lively, readable, honest, superficial, rich in color, anecdote and detail. Occasionally bumbling in literary style, it lacks coherence, is reflective but not philosophic. No great creative thinker, no intellectual delver into the remote why & wherefore of things, Author Sullivan has laid for future historians of the period an indispensable groundwork of fact and atmosphere. His story of the 1920 Republican NationalConvention, of how Strategist Harry Daugherty prepared the way and Republican elders reluctantly pushed reluctant Warren Harding into the Presidency, is masterly, probably definitive. His account of the Oil Scandals is almost equally thoroughgoing. Though he frankly liked Warren Harding and some of his cronies, Historian Sullivan has pulled no punches in detailing his shortcomings as President and the national disasters to which they led. In passing, Author Sullivan demolishes a few legends. Boss Boise Penrose, he reveals, did not dictate Harding's nomination from his Philadelphia sickbed. It was a newshawk, not Harry Daugherty, who predicted that the Republican nominee would be chosen by "15 men in a smoke-filled room at 2 a. m."