Even for Eric Adams, whose tough upbringing played a huge role in his rise to become mayor of New York City, the story of his near-miss at a school was harrowing.
One day, Adams was hanging out at school with a group of friends when someone showed up with a gun, according to his 2009 book, “Don’t Let It Happen.” Adams was a child at the time and believed the gun was a fake.
“I pointed what I thought was a toy gun at my group of friends and pulled the trigger,” the passage reads. “A bullet was fired, and only by the grace of God and my poor aim did the bullet miss my friends. The incident scared me so much that I dropped the gun and fled.”
But at a press conference Monday, a few days after the passage was highlighted in an article by the publication Byline, Adams said the dramatic encounter did not happen.
“I never fired a gun in school,” he said. “The book’s co-author may have misunderstood an incident in which someone pointed to what he thought was a toy gun,” he added.
Adams went on to say that the book “never made it to print because it was never proofread.”
However, the book, which only lists Adams as the author, is currently available for purchase on Amazon and the Barnes & Noble website, and a physical copy was shown to Adams on Monday. It was also mentioned in a 2021 New York Magazine cover story about Adams, and a 2022 Politico profile.
A City Hall spokesperson said after the news conference that the mayor had never reviewed the final version of the book and had only just learned that it was publicly available.
“The mayor has already contacted the publisher, who is working to remove the book from circulation,” spokesman Charles Lutvak said in an email. He said the mayor worked on the book with a ghostwriter, whom he declined to name.
In 2009, Adams, a former NYPD captain, was a state senator representing Brooklyn. The back of the book states that it was intended to help parents “detect when their children may be involved in potentially harmful activities.”
It was released by Xulon Press, a company that specializes in self-published Christian titles and is owned by Salem Media Group, a powerful conservative publisher. Questions to Xulon were not answered on Monday.
Across 150 pages, the book gives readers practical advice on topics such as teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse – “Malt liquor is considered the bad boy of the beer family,” it says – as well as how to find your child’s gun stash, following an instructional video which Adams would record two years later.
Raised by a single mother in Queens, South Jamaica, Adams has often touted his working-class roots. He recently told voters that as a child he prayed for snow so he would have something to drink when the water in his house was turned off.
But some personal stories, often difficult to verify, have come under scrutiny. He admitted to The New York Times that a confrontation he claimed he had with a neighbor, which he recounted in a 2019 speech, actually happened to someone else. And he has faced questions about small changes he has made to an oft-repeated story about being beaten by police as a child.
In 2020, Adams wrote a cookbook promoting “plant-based” recipes. But two years later he admitted that he sometimes eats fish, despite describing himself as vegan in the past.
“Don’t Let It Happen,” his first book, features a colorful cover depicting a revolver in a pink lunchbox, as well as an assailant attributed to Adams’ longtime domestic partner, Tracey Collins.
In the introduction, the author assures readers: “All incidents in this book are true.”