THE COMPLETE BEATLES CHRONICLE b<i> y Mark Lewisohn (Harmony Books: $40.; 368 pp.).</i>

If you had to pick two books about the Beatles, you’d probably want Mark Lewisohn’s “The Beatles Live!” and “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions”--the most detailed and accurate accounts of the group’s formative years and in-studio work ever written. If, however, you had to pick one book about the Beatles, Mark Lewisohn’s “The Complete Beatles Chronicle” would be the choice. It combines most of the out-of-print “Live!” and “Recording Sessions” in one volume, and adds a complete record of the Beatles’ radio and television appearances. Not just an encyclopedia of minutiae for students of the group’s history, “Chronicle” ultimately presents an engagingly written, sweeping, unbiased picture of the Beatles’ remarkable history, rivaled only by the reigning “definitive” biography, “Shout!” by Philip Norman (which contains a few factual errors and takes the dopey position that George Harrison was the “ultimate passenger.”) And Lewisohn--regarded by fans (and Beatles producer George Martin, who wrote the foreword) as the world’s leading authority on the group--unearths many little-known facts. Did you know there was once a full-fledged Beatle named Chas Newby?