Source: www.cleveland.com/books Author: teve Weinberg Stephen Grover Cleveland, born in 1837, would become one of the most unusual U.S. presidents, in multiple ways. Living in the east, he planned to make his way to the boomtown of Cleveland, in 1854, seeking riches. His prospects looked good, given the influence of his distant relative, Moses Cleaveland, often credited with founding the city. The young man never made it past Buffalo, N.Y., however, where an uncle made him an employment offer. The rest of his life, Grover Cleveland (he dropped Stephen in favor of his middle name) would be bound up in New York state politics, except when he spent two nonconsecutive terms in the White House, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897. Matthew Algeo, a historian and radio journalist, focuses on a dramatic, little-known event in his new book, "The President Is a Sick Man." Algeo, a strong writer, nevertheless saddles his work with a ponderous subtitle "Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth." Suffering from mouth cancer in 1893, Cleveland disappeared to undergo surgery on the yacht of a friend. The president, his doctors and political advisers feared that news might exacerbate a financial recession and trigger panic. Cleveland's popular wife, Frances, young enough to be his daughter, lied to journalists about the president's whereabouts. Cleveland's press aide lied, too. Reporters accepted the falsehoods, misleading the citizenry into believing the nation's leader vanished for five days to undergo [...]