The President Is a Sick Man

March 7, 2011
Despite a reputation for honesty, says Algeo (Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure), "President Grover Cleveland, like FDR and JFK, went to great lengths to hide an illness from the public. In June 1893, having told the New York Times he was going away for a rest, Cleveland secretly boarded a friend's yacht and disappeared for five days as surgeons onboard removed a cancerous tumor from his mouth and much of his upper jaw. Reporters at the Cleveland's Cape Cod summer home became curious when the Oneida failed to arrive. Within weeks, Philadelphia Press reporter E.J. Edwards revealed the truth in "one of the greatest scoops in... American journalism," but the public accepted the official denials. Maligned by rival newspapers, Edwards was branded as "a disgrace to journalism," his career "seemingly tainted forever by allegations that he had faked the story." But he was vindicated in 1917 when the facts were finally revealed in a Saturday Evening Post article. Along with a solid reconstruction of these events, Algeo paints a colorful portrait of political intrigue and journalism during the Gilded Age. B&w photos.

March 15, 2011

In 1893, during his second term, President Cleveland went on a yacht trip from New York City without providing details to his cabinet, his vice president, the press, or the public. Cleveland, known for honesty, secretly had a cancerous tumor removed from his jaw. Algeo (Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip) makes good use of primary and secondary sources to give general readers a full history of these circumstances, known to presidential and medical historians but to few others. An investigative journalist who sought to reveal the truth was vilified by the skeptical public; one of the participating physicians published the story in 1917, almost ten years after Cleveland's death. Algeo explains the reasons for Cleveland's discretion: the country was in a financial panic, vice president Adlai Stevenson opposed the President on the matter of hard money policies, and Cleveland did not want to lose the upper hand. VERDICT Algeo's colloquial, even punchy account fills out our understanding of a press-shy President, the day's newspaper rivalries, and the role of First Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland. Recommended for those who enjoy popular presidential histories and biographies, the history of U.S. newspaper reporting, and popular medical nonfiction.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2011
The cover-up lasted for 25 years, until a surgeon who attended the 1893 operation to excise cancer from President Grover Clevelands mouth revealed all in a magazine article. But the concealment nearly collapsed immediately when a journalist got the scoopand vituperation for his veracity. To relate this remarkable story, Algeo brings together biographies of Cleveland, his doctors, and the newspaperman and accounts of medical practice of the period and politics in 1893. Determined to put the dollar on the gold standard, Cleveland was engineering repeal of silver coinage and would not debase his political capital with public fussing about his health. Besides, Algeo notes, people didnt mention the c word in those days. With two rationales for secrecy, Cleveland dropped out of sight for five days, submitting to surgery in a bizarre setting, a yacht in Long Island Sound. Algeos rousing rendition of the episode is as entertaining about presidential physiology as his Harry Trumans Excellent Adventure (2009) was about presidential travel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)