Ralph Ingersoll, b. 1900. My notes say this biog is "amazingly readable" even though Hoopes's writing is "pedestrian."

1924. "We were drunk almost every night and each one of us drinks for a different reason." Ingersoll's life in the 1920's was "one long pursuit of a hangover." A Yale graduate, he was an early writer for The New Yorker, writing and editing "Talk of the Town."

At one point, Ingersoll and Lillian Hellman were an item--really? Yes.

Ingersoll worked on several magazines throughout his career; he was "primarily responsible" for bring Life mag into existence. He also worked on Time mag. It's hard to imagine in 2010, but the older staffers at Time in the 1930s tended to be conservative.

Ingersoll wrote a bitchy novel, *The Great Ones.* Oh, was he an angry man. Claire Booth Luce's biographer calls the novel a "thinly disguised and embittered caricature" of Claire, Harry Luce, and Time magazine. If you know anything about the period, this thing certainly isn't much "disguised."

A plus: the biography contains an index and sources. ( )