In 1999 an editor from Yurimi Shimbun asked Portsmouth journalist J. Dennis Robinson to show him around town. Maybe you've never heard or Yurimi Shimbun, but about 10 million people read it daily; it's the world's largest newspaper.

The Japanese editor approached Robinson after reading some local history Robinson had written and posted on the Web. He was particularly interested in one historic site: Wentworth by the Sea in New Castle. They drove out to view the shambles of what once had been a grand hotel. The editor was appalled: "Why doesn't your New Hampshire government do something?" he asked. "Don't they understand the importance of this building to the Japanese people?"

As a matter of fact, they don't, Robinson told him.

For the record, in the long, hot summer of 1905, at the urging of President Teddy Roosevelt, diplomats from Russia and Japan held marathon negotiations and enjoyed the amenities at what was then called the Wentworth Hotel, eventually negotiating an end to their "exhausting territorial war over Korea and the Sakhelin islands." In 18 months, half a million men had died, and the fear was that this "bloodiest war in world history to date might spread into Europe and Asia as countries were forced to take sides."

The world was on the brink of the first global war, but history dodged a bullet with the signing of the Russo-Japanese treaty at the Wentworth Hotel.

The good news is that a few historically minded activists did recognize the importance of the landmark. In the early 1990s, the nonprofit Friends of the Wentworth took up the cause of saving and bringing back into use a building described by one historian, Ray Brighton, as "a feeble, weather-beaten remnant (and) . . . a disgrace, not only to Frank Jones, the man who built it, but also to the community that refused to let it go."

Actually, Frank Jones, Portsmouth's famous ale tycoon, didn't build the Wentworth, though he did own it for many years.

The Friends disagreed with Brighton. "There's history we can't ignore here," said historian Dorothy Vaughan, who happened to have been born in 1904. "It's an incredibly significant hotel and site, and people really care about it," said former state representative Martha Fuller Clark.

The Friends raised a ruckus when the hotel was slated to be razed. They also raised money for paint - it needed a fresh coat. Most important, they raised awareness. June 1996 looked like demolition time, and a buyer with the money and vision to restore the place was desperately needed. In the nick of time, the Friends announced that Wentworth by the Sea had been named one of America's eleven most endangered historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation."

The threat of demolition faded in the glare of the national spotlight. Long story short, "On February 19, 1997, the Portsmouth Herald ran a banner headline: 'The Wentworth is Saved.'" Ocean Properties ponied up and, well, the rest is history. Wentworth by the Sea is now revived, revitalized and resuscitated - a thriving business as well as a sprawling and irreplaceable piece of Americana.

Whew.

And how do I know all this? That same J. Dennis Robinson, challenged by the Japanese editor to explain what went wrong and why nothing was being done about it, not only became a fighter for the cause but also wrote a book. Wentworth by the Sea: The Life and Times of a Grand Hotel is a beauty, with more than 200 black and white photos and illustrations as well as eight pages of color photos in the middle, some dating back to 1874 when the grand hotel was built by Sarah and Charles Campbell. Sure they overextended and went bankrupt, but boy did they know how to pick a spot and attract a hoity-toity clientele.

With an easy prose style and a well-informed passion, Robinson presents the personalities behind the rise and fall and rise of Wentworth by the Sea. The history of this hotel is also the history of the region, the state, heck, the whole world, come to think of it - if you consider a world war averted. President Chester Arthur stopped by in September of 1882. The names Herbert Hoover, FDR and Richard Nixon are among those on the guest register. Annie Oakley taught women guests how to shoot. Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington performed. (Though blacks were never guests in the early days; nor were Jews for that matter.) Walter Cronkite offered this tribute in his WWII book North by Northeast: "Visible from miles at sea . . . is the seemingly endless expanse of one of the country's finest old Victorian hotels, Wentworth by the Sea."

Robinson packs his pages with anecdotes - including a scandal or two, insight into class structure and a peep at how the rich entertain themselves - that kept me reading straight through, three hours or so when I should have been out in the garden planting peas. Turn the pages, study the pictures and imagine yourself a guest at the majestic Wentworth: imagine the music, the dancing, the beautiful people all dressed up and bejeweled; the stables, the tennis courts, the golf course, swimming in the tide-fed heated pool and the quaint suits the swimmers wore; the Italian sculpture, the art deco extravagances; the elegant dining, the highly-trained staff for whom no complaint is too small to be addressed quickly and to your satisfaction. Ever see the movie Gold Diggers of 1935, a Busby Berkeley extravaganza? Remember the scene where "a surreal chorus of women" play "40 white grand pianos that float around the screen with kaleidoscopic precision"? The resplendent setting for that movie is (wink) the "Wentworth Plaza" in New Hampshire. Now you get the idea!