Julius Caesar and Boss Tweed ... Cleopatra and Coolidge ... Shelley and Trader Horn ... the flood of biographies comes pouring in out of the publishers' presses. Chaliapin and Bismarck ... Napoleon and His Women Friends ... Robespierre and Uncle Joe Cannon ... with every anecdote that ever murmured about them in five point type. All the state secrets the private correspondence, the family albums, the unkind word and the billet doux that was lost before it could be committed to the flames.

Every innuendo is tabulated, annotated, put with the other conversational flotsam between board covers. The gossip about Henry Ward Beecher's liaison, the lady friend of the Man in the Iron Mask, the other life of Carlyle. All the things that were tongue transmitted because the tabloid was not yet. Louis VIII and Roosevelt ... Francis Joseph and Lord Northcliffe ... Joan of Arc and Jesse James ... all that was said by lips behind a gloved hand or an outspread fan. Why Victoria sent the young officer into the India service, the life and times of the President's Daughter, who paid Lieutenant Becker. How can what almost was be distinguished from what only might have been? Roosevelt and Rasputin ... Talleyrand and Billy the Kid ... the Women Lincoln Loved...