The subtitle of this book "Wherein the supposedly virtuous Grover Cleveland survives a secret surgery at sea and vilifies the courageous newspaperman who dared expose the truth" pretty much tells what this book is about. I picked this after reading a favorable review and I'm so glad I did. I haven't been so engrossed in a nonfiction book in years. Matthew Algeo chronicled the events surrounding the diagnosis and removal of a large tumor from the roof of President Cleveland's mouth by Dr. W.W. Keen. The secrecy surrounding the operation, which took place on board a yacht while Cleveland was "on vacation," made this one of the best kept government secrets in history. In fact, no one knew of it other than Mrs. Cleveland, the medical team, the yacht owner, the steward on board, and one cabinet member. When one of the medical team breaks his promise of silence, journalist E.J. Edwards gets hold of the story and publishes the account. Denials from the White House, Cleveland's staff, and the other doctors involved along with staged demonstrations of Cleveland's well-being squash the story and turns Edwards into the "bad guy." What is more astounding than the secrecy is Cleveland's amazing recovery after a risky surgery performed in less than perfect conditions in an era where the idea of sterile procedure was in its infancy. Compounding the conditions was the stress Cleveland was under as the country was experiencing the "Panic of 1893", an economic depression surpassed in severity only by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many years later, after the deaths of most of those involved, Dr. Keen obtained the permission of Cleveland's widow to publish an account of the surgery and set the record straight. His article was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916. In it Keen vindicated E.J. Edwards and the article he had written so many years before. Algeo has written a very readable account which I found very hard to put down.
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