This is a nicely balanced history of the surgery performed on Grover Cleveland without the country knowing that he was ill. The president had a growth in his mouth that was removed on a luxury yacht in the Long Island Sound. The information leaked during the financial panic of 1893. The newspaper man who told the story was vilified by all, including the president and his staff. The truth was not told for another quarter of a century when the surgeon who performed the surgery believed that the country should know and the newspaper man vindicated.
The biography of Grover Cleveland was briefly provided up to the time of the surgery - enough to appreciate his history. The context of the country's financial plight and the social perceptions were fully laid out. Cleveland's subsequent health and politics were added only to the amount necessary to understand the ramifications of his surgery.
This story was tightly woven and very readable without a lot of extra facts and meanderings. The only thing that would have been nice to have while reading this story would have been a concise timeline. The author does provide a "cast of characters," but some of the dates were difficult to follow since he would indicate them by stating "12 years later." ( )

I went in with low expectations of this book--after a while many popular histories of things about presidents read the same, and I've read many of them--but this was a surprise, mostly in how quickly and easily it read. It does suffer in some ways from that popular white history trope of the odd dive into a tidbit that really isn't necessary to the story, but is still potentially interesting to the reader (all of the details about newspaper battles were not necessarily critical to the entire story, I would argue, but I get why they're in there, for example.) Overall it was, like I said, a quick and easy read, and fairly enjoyable for a book in this kind of genre. If these kinds of books are already your thing, you'll definitely enjoy this! ( )

An interesting topic for a while. Also got sort of rambly in the last 50 pages. ( )

An interesting topic for a while. Also got sort of rambly in the last 50 pages. ( )

An interesting topic for a while. Also got sort of rambly in the last 50 pages. ( )