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who write very good non-fiction but insist on writing bad fiction. Both novels were colossal failures and, of course, he blamed us. Then Simon and Schuster came to him and offered him a lot of money to write a book about Oscar Hammerstein...not the author of Oklahoma, but his grandfather--the Hammerstein who built an opera house here. We readily gave him permission. Since then he has been free-lancing. He is doing books that he's commissioned to do.

I think that it's always hard when somebody leaves. You never know if you have made a mistake.

Well, Sheehan was our fault. The George Stewart thing was mutual, but we lost all interest in Vincent Sheehan. I don't think that his recent books have been any good at all.

The only author that we lost who really hurt me was Irwin Shaw.

Now tell about Bob Considine and his Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

Let's see... By the fall of 1943, I had become very friendly with Bob Considine, and he led me to Captain Lawson, the hero of Thirty Seconds over Tokyo. He was one of the flyers, who had lost his leg in the sensational air raid over Tokyo.

How did you meet Considine originally?