Eric Adams’ 2021 book, “Healthy at Last,” a guide to clean eating, was released to great fanfare, with positive reviews from Rev. Al Sharpton and Remy Ma, among others. At the time, Adams was Brooklyn Borough president and a rising candidate for New York City mayor.
Less well known is Adams’ 2009 book “Don’t Let it Happen.” The book, published when Adams was a member of the New York State Senate, is meant to be a “life-saving resource,” according to its description on Amazon, “designed to assist parents in detecting when their children are involved in an activity that can be harmful to themselves and/or other family members.”
The book had been out of the public eye in recent years, until now: Last week, the publication Byline published a review of the book, including a passage that has caused a stir for a mayor who's tied his reputation to public safety.
One day, one of Adams’ friends brought a gun to school, according to the passage described in the review. His friend said it was real, but Adams didn’t believe it, so he grabbed the gun himself.
“I pointed what I thought was a toy gun at my group of friends and pulled the trigger. A round discharged, 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 ran,” Adams wrote, according to the review.
The revelation triggered a fresh news cycle of chaos surrounding Adams, who pushed back on the validity of the account Monday at his weekly press conference.
“The co-author of the book may have misunderstood,” Adams said. “There was an incident at school where someone pointed a, they thought it was a toy gun and they may have misunderstood. That book never got into print because we never went through the proofreading aspect of it.”
On Monday, an Adams spokesperson told the Associated Press the mayor had contacted the publisher to remove the book from circulation. The book is available in print, however, and as of Wednesday morning can be purchased on Amazon for $18.59. And no co-author is listed.
The debacle has come at a particularly inopportune time for Adams, who is already facing pressure from a federal investigation into his 2021 campaign’s ties to Turkey and a sexual assault lawsuit.
All of that baggage followed him Tuesday to the New York State Capitol in Albany, where he planned to attend Governor Kathy Hochul’s State of the State address and meet with lawmakers.
Adams signaled he would ask lawmakers for financial assistance to manage the ongoing migrant crisis, renewal of mayoral control over the city’s public schools, increased enforcement power to shut down unlicensed cannabis shops and more.
