Jennie: Grover Cleveland

The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth by Matthew Algeo

I loved this book! The secrecy, the lies, the drama, the science of early medicine! This book was practically made for me. Seriously, this is such a Jennie book.

I think what I found most fascinating is how mass media has changed things. Can you imagine the President just getting on a boat and disappearing now? MAD PANIC. And, everyone involved would be brought up on charges for lying and all that.

And, you know, it’s not totally off base. The VP had not a single clue that Cleveland was going through such a risky surgery. He could’ve died, and was at the very least unable to perform his duties for a few days, but no one in the general public knew. Oh man!

The whole finding his tumor in a jar in the modern day and having it tested with our current technology was just the icing on the cake. Fascinating!

Basically, read this book. If you like biographies, read it. If you like non-fiction, read it. If you just like a good should’ve ended in tragedy, but just ended in a lot of drama, read it!

Jacki: Ronald Reagan

 

Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader, by Dinesh D’Souza

Ok, just… if you love Ronald Reagan, you’ll love this book. If his politics seem pretty gross to you, this book will send you into rage fits.

It’s a biography kind of. Mostly it is a suuuuuper conservative propaganda pamphlet. I mean, it honestly reads like a love letter or something. I knew going in, because of the title, that it would probably fall on the side of favoring Reagan, which honestly I would rather read than a big huge “I hate this guy” biography because negativity is so off-putting. Today I learned that hero worship is way, way more off-putting to me.

I think that the problem with writing something that is SO one sided is that it makes me doubt everything that the author says. I know that he’s exaggerating and projecting in some areas so I’m left to wonder about every. single. fact. that is presented.

Honestly, it was well written and I had no trouble reading it, except for the part where the dude justified every single action that RR made in office and went on and on about just how dang funny and brilliant and smarter than everyone on the planet he was.

I wasn’t a fan, but I know that it was my political leanings more than anything that kept me from enjoying it.