Name: The President is a Sick Man
ISBN: 9781569763506

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

Jeremy Anderberg

“By insisting on total secrecy, the president, not his doctors, dictated his course of treatment.”

I was hoping this book would follow along in the vein of Candice Millard’s books — part biography, part mystery and thriller, compulsively readable. And for the most part, it didn’t disappoint. (Really, it’s unfair to compare anyone to Candice.)

These sorts of books tend to offer a few things: a broad (and short) biographical portrait, a look at the larger context of the era and the issues dominating the cultural conversation, and a primary story zeroed in on a narrow but instructive time period in the figure’s life.

While obviously not serving as a full-scale biography, you can learn a lot from these shorter, more focused books — this type of narrative can reveal far more than a totally zoomed out portrait.

Anyways . . . on to Grover. His career itself is interesting in that he was president twice, but non-consecutively. So he’s POTUS #22 and #24. His politics were pretty reprehensible (to me), and his personal life was atrocious. But perhaps the most intriguing story of Grover’s life was the secret surgery he had on the open sea to remove a tumor from his mouth. Then, when journalists found out, Cleveland did what he could to ruin their careers.

Algeo weaves a fascinating tale not only of Grover’s surgery, but also the history of presidential illnesses swept under the rug, what surgery/cancer was like back then (far more harrowing than now), and why it all matters today. The parallels were obvious and head-shaking; presidents have always and will always try to keep their health under wraps. The President Is a Sick Man is a fun, short, highly recommended book.

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

Reviews

Highlights