Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s death Feb. 28 came before he completed the second volume of his memoirs, a real loss to readers who loved his first: "A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950."

Not to worry: Now comes "Journals: 1952-2000," 894 pages of Schlesinger's scribblings over the next half century. Culled, incredibly, from nearly 8,000 pages by his sons, Stephen and Andrew, in a last, loving act, it's a wonder Schlesinger found the time to write them while also producing 18 scholarly works of history and innumerable essays, articles and speeches on the nature of democracy, liberalism, civil liberties, constitutional processes and the limits of presidential power, not to mention numerous movie reviews and the occasional well-paying travel piece or celebrity interview.

"Journals" is both a relief and a disappointment. That there's a record of the last part of his large, crowded, productive life, in Schlesinger's own words, is gratifying, but those words seem dashed off with haste, often weeks after an event occurred.

By contrast, "A Life in the Twentieth Century" was a hugely satisfying read -- even for those who don't think of themselves as scholars of history -- as was so much else Schlesinger wrote. His first book, "The Age of Jackson," was published when he was 27 -- 27! -- with the narrative sweep and texture of a great novel. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1946, a feat he'd pull off again in 1965 with "A Thousand Days," his chronicle of John F. Kennedy's administration.

A rich seam of anecdotes and boldfaced names runs throughout "Journals" but the whole exercise seems to have been regarded by its author as something of a chore. He is thorough, if not always keen for the task: "I have been remiss in not keeping a more faithful account of the [1960] campaign"; "Today is the first day of the Johnson era ... and I suppose I that I ought to put something on the record"; "I have been meaning for some time to put down some notes about Vietnam."

Never mind: "Journals" is still highly entertaining, with rich detail, gossip and snipe-y asides peppered like grapeshot amid more portentous passages on Vietnam, the Soviet Union and multiculturalism. For someone who prided himself on being the champion of the common man, all his life Schlesinger preferred the company of the smart, the attractive and the powerful -- "I must say that I adore sitting around hotel rooms with politicians and newspapermen exchanging gossip over drinks," he wrote gleefully in early 1960.

Heavily involved behind the scenes in the two presidential campaigns of Adlai Stevenson, he carefully extricated himself from the cerebral, dithering Illinois governor to align with the up-and-coming Kennedy, despite initial suspicions about JFK: "I believe him to be a liberal ... I also believe him to be a devious, and if necessary, ruthless man." A weekend at Hyannis Port would soon cure that, reminding him of time spent at Stevenson's Illinois farm -- "the same spacious, tranquil country house, the same upper class ease of manners, the same sense of children and dogs about; the same humor; the frank conversation about a variety of subjects; the same quick transition from the serious to the frivolous."

Not long afterward, Schlesinger would change his view of the "ruthless" JFK -- now "warm, funny, quick, intelligent and spontaneous" -- and never look back. Schlesinger's lifelong emotional attachment to the Kennedy family earned him scorn and derision -- Gore Vidal famously called "A Thousand Days" a political novel -- and all his life Schlesinger would be dogged by critics who called him an apologist for the Kennedys, something he would mostly shrug off. In later years, he would fume over perceived competition from others peddling "insider" books about JFK, exchanging indignant phone calls with McGeorge Bundy about Richard Reeves' "President Kennedy" book. "We both agreed that Reeves' JFK was not at all the one we had known," he writes, as if that settled the matter.

While Kennedy clearly valued him as a sounding board, Schlesinger wielded little power during the brief time he spent in government. A memo of his objecting to the planned Bay of Pigs invasion was ignored. While there were plenty of pool parties at Hickory Hill, his journals find him fretting that "the President somewhat discounts my views, primarily because he regards me as a claimant agency for standardized liberalism." And at one point we have JFK lying about his Addison's disease to Schlesinger, who dutifully records it without question.

Schlesinger's loathing of three presidents -- Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter -- is documented in ways petty and profound. Carter is incompetent; Johnson "destroyed the authority of the presidency"; and Nixon "is the greatest [obscenity/scatological reference] -- probably the only (obscenity/scatological reference) -- ever elected President of the United States."

Once out of government -- he stayed for only two months after Kennedy's assassination -- his growing sense of helplessness and outrage over Vietnam resulted in lots of meetings, articles and a few small acts of social rebellion, one occurring at a large Washington dinner for Johnson's Secretary of State Dean Rusk. After refusing to give the secretary a standing ovation, Schlesinger's later encounter with the president perfectly captured a score-keeping LBJ:

"After a moment of chat, [Johnson] said, 'Well, Arthur, I noticed you had a little trouble with your chair when there was that ovation with Dean.' ... He seemed entirely cordial but how characteristic that he should have peered out over the audience during the ovation and beadily noted who were remaining seated."

Schlesinger never intended his journals to be deeply personal: His divorce from his first wife, Marian, isn't mentioned, although complaints about his alimony payments are. His focus is on the outside world, punctuated by juicy anecdotes (Nixon is so venal during the funeral of Anwar Sadat that Gerald Ford says, "Sometimes wish I had never pardoned that son-of-a bitch"), many of them sourced by Henry Kissinger, a favorite lunching companion of Schlesinger, whom he regarded with equal amounts suspicion and affection: "I like Henry very much and respect him, though I cannot rid myself of the fear that he says one sort of thing to me and another sort of thing to, say, Bill Buckley."

No kidding.

During the latter half of his life, happily married to his second wife, Alexandra, settled on Manhattan's Upper East Side, perennially broke but on everyone's "A" list, Schlesinger would dine with the great or near-great, from Averell Harriman to John Huston. "I lunched at the Century [Club] with Walter Lippmann" is a typical entry; so is "Went to a party given by Goddard ... Lieberson [legendary founder of Columbia records] at the St. Regis for a hero of my youth, Groucho Marx. He is a small man with a weary, astute face, a beret and a line of compulsive, almost automatic verbal response. He looks exactly like Groucho Marx."

Warm and convivial, Schlesinger nonetheless had what he jokingly called his "enemies list," mainly Kennedy critics -- Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne ("this dreadful couple ... she is a viperish, whispering little creature"), the "egregious" William F. Buckley Jr. and Patrick Moynihan. At a dinner hosted by Jacqueline Onassis, "[Moynihan] was more than usually intolerable ... he swells like a bullfrog ... he was superficially cordial but obviously detests me (manners and feelings I reciprocate)." He would later mellow toward Buckley and Didion, "who seems to have forgiven all my heresies and kisses when we meet. Naturally I think much better of her."

Schlesinger also watched in horrified fascination when his old nemesis, Richard Nixon, moved into a Manhattan townhouse behind his in 1980 -- the two shared a back yard. His monitoring would be comically intense: "Still no action across the [Nixon] fence," he reported in December of 1979, only to be rewarded the following spring: "... Saw the unmistakable figure on the terrace picking up some logs. He returned to the house; then inexplicably came out in a few minutes, still carrying the logs."

Somehow, the thought of Schlesinger peering avidly through the window at "the unforgettable profile" seems a bit beneath him, but "Journals" remains a valuable social and historical document of the last half of what Time magazine once hopefully dubbed the American Century. While Schlesinger's vision of a liberal yet temperate "vital center" -- the title of one of his best books -- was demolished in the 1960s and 1970s, he carried on, disappointed in his country but still in the game, until his death at 89. A second volume of his memoirs might have come off as more polished, erudite and polite, but nowhere near as much lively -- or as irresistibly revealing.