Melville House Books

A day after he manipulated the New York City Council into striking down term limits — at a raucous City Hall session and with people screaming “Liar!”, angered over the fact that the limits had been twice endorsed by city-wide voter referendum, and the mayor had sworn on numerous occasions that he would never, EVER undo the will of the people on this issue — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he was “postponing” his forthcoming and highly-anticipated book, Do the Hard Things First (And Other Bloomberg Rules for Business and Politics). According to a New York Times report, Bloomberg’s co-author, Margaret Carlson, “said that the book was practically finished, but that with the mayor gearing up to run for a third term, the release of a been-there-done-that retrospective seemed ill-timed.” The book had been expected to do quite well, and was slated for a first printing of 300,000 copies. So far, no one has delved into — nor even observed — the interesting alternative scenario posed by the fact that Bloomberg, the famous financial genius, chose as his publisher the only publisher amongst the giant New York conglomerates owned by a hedge fund, Perseus, in a time when hedge funds aren’t doing all that well.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.