In tandem with his full return to cultural and political journalism, which included prolonged debates with both the "old" historians and the "Junimists", Iorga was still active at the forefront of historical research. In 1904, he published the historical geography work "Drumuri și orașe din România" ("Roads and Towns of Romania") and, upon the special request of National Liberal Education Minister Spiru Haret, a work dedicated to the celebrated Moldavian Prince Stephen the Great, published upon the 400th anniversary of the monarch's death as "Istoria lui Ștefan cel Mare" ("The History of Stephen the Great"). Iorga later confessed that the book was an integral part of his and Haret's didacticist agenda, supposed to be "spread to the very bottom of the country in thousands of copies". During those months, Iorga also helped discover novelist Mihail Sadoveanu, who was for a while the leading figure of "Sămănătorist" literature.