THE MAN TIME FORGOT: A TALE OF GENIUS, BETRAYAL AND THE CREATION OF TIME MAGAZINE, by Isaiah Wilner, HarperCollins, 342 pages, $26.95.

It seems fitting that Isaiah Wilner, a freshly minted Ph.D. in history from Yale — not yet out of his 20s — should give Briton Hadden, the man who conceived the idea for Time magazine while he was still in his 20s — his due.

For nearly 80 years, Henry R. Luce, the magazine's co-founder, a financier, and not an idea man, took the credit. Hadden and Luce had both a close and combative relationship, attended and finished Yale together — then went on to found Time magazine, which initiated a trend toward interesting and entertaining news coverage — nicknamed "Timestyle."

When Hadden slept little while working and playing so hard that his body developed a mysterious illness for which he was hospitalized, Luce went to see him nearly every day. The two could be heard quarreling all over the hospital. Then when Hadden died at the age of 31, Luce erased his name from the masthead and kept Hadden's genius and contribution to the rise of Time a secret.

As Wilner so ably points out in this David McCullough-style "interesting history," Hadden was robbed of the fame he deserved. During a strenuous intellectual enterprise that took him almost five years, Wilner sorted through never-before-published documents from the archives of Time Inc. that included a wealth of oral histories, personal letters and interviews, then wrote this book detailing his findings.

Besides Time, Hadden had given intellectual birth to Life, Sports Illustrated and Fortune magazines before his tragic, unheralded death. His intellect had much more to give. Luce lived another 38 years and gained a reputation as the most influential publisher in modern journalism.

Wilner discovered that as Time's editor, Luce delivered well over 300 speeches on many different topics, such as the economy, the Constitution, the future of China — and Time's journalistic methods — but not once did he refer to the legacy of Briton Hadden.

On May 6, 1963, a huge gathering at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York celebrated Time's 40th birthday. Some 300 of the most illustrious people in the country were there — Bob Hope and Danny Kaye, Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis, Rosalind Russell and Gina Lollobrigida, General Douglas MacArthur, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson and Casey Stengel, Jonas Salk and Clair Booth Luce (wife of Henry Luce) were some of the luminaries.

Nothing was said about the secret genius of Time magazine.

But four years later, Luce, who had deepened his interest in religion, agreed to an extended television interview — and for the first time, he spoke warmly of Briton Hadden and his role in the establishment of Time.

It's a good thing accolades were never important to his deceased partner.

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