Matthew Algeo

Recounts the summer of 1893 when President Grover Cleveland disappeared for five days, covering up a surgery to remove cancer from his palate and jaw.

Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman who Dared Expose the Truth

The President is a Sick Man

Robert Kennedy's 1968 Tour of Appalachia

All This Marvelous Potential

Provides a history of Harry and Bess Truman's 2,5000-mile automobile journey from Missouri to New York, a trip begun on June 19, 1953 with no Secret Service protection and no travelling press.

The True Story of a Great American Road Trip

Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure

Truman and Picasso were contemporaries and were both shaped by and shapers of the great events of the twentieth century--the man who painted Guernica and the man who authorized the use of atomic bombs against civilians. But in most ways, they couldn't have been more different. Picasso was a communist, and probably the only thing Harry Truman hated more than communists was modern art. Picasso was an indifferent father, a womanizer, and a millionaire. Truman was utterly devoted to his family and, despite his fame, far from a rich man. How did they come to be shaking hands in front of Picasso's studio in the South of France? Truman's meeting with Picasso was quietly arranged by Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art and an early champion of Picasso. Barr knew that if he could convince these two ideological antipodes, the straight-talking politician from Missouri and the Cubist painter from Málaga, to simply shake hands, it would send a powerful message, not just to reactionary Republicans pushing McCarthyism at home, but to the whole world: modern art was not evil. Truman author Matthew Algeo retraced the Trumans' Mediterranean vacation and visited the places they went with Picasso, including Picasso's villa, Picasso's ceramics studio in Vallauris, and Château Grimaldi, a museum in Antibes. A rigorous history with a heartwarming center, When Harry Met Pablo intertwines the biographies of Truman and Picasso, the history of modern art, and twentieth century American politics--but at its core it is the touching story of two old men who meet for the first time and realize they have more in common--and are more alike--than they ever imagined.

Truman, Picasso, and the Cold War Politics of Modern Art

When Harry Met Pablo

Strange as it sounds, during the 1870s and 1880s, America’s most popular spectator sport wasn’t baseball, football, or horseracing—it was competitive walking. Inside sold-out arenas, competitors walked around dirt tracks almost nonstop for six straight days (never on Sunday), risking their health and sanity to see who could walk the farthest—more than 500 miles. These walking matches were as talked about as the weather, the details reported in newspapers and telegraphed to fans from coast to coast. This long-forgotten sport, known as pedestrianism, spawned America’s first celebrity athletes and opened doors for immigrants, African Americans, and women. But along with the excitement came the inevitable scandals, charges of doping and insider gambling, and even a riot in 1879. Pedestrianism chronicles competitive walking’s peculiar appeal and popularity, its rapid demise, and its enduring influence.

Matthew Algeo

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