I was completely engrossed in this book. I majored in political science and minored in communications, so I am fascinated by the interplay between politics and the media. This book told a fascinating story of how Grover Cleveland understood how the media's reporting of the state of his health had the potential to drive the nation's economy into further panic, or had the power to help at least keep the nation's economy from hemorrhaging even further. This was a masterful political cover up, and the author excels at placing the seriousness of Cleveland's condition, and the subsequent cover up, within a social and historical context.
The story was padded, to be sure (the core story itself could have been told in considerably fewer pages), but this surgery, and the desperate efforts to keep news of it out of the papers, honestly would not have had the same resonance or the same interest if the author had failed to place this event within a broader context.
I thought that the book concluded somewhat weakly, but I can't really say that the overall product was terribly marred by the discordant end. This was a good book that told about a fascinating time in American history.