“Mount Pleasant: My Journey from Creating a Billion Dollar Company to Teaching in a Struggling Public School,” is GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner’s memoir of how he cashed out a Silicon Valley start-up and became a volunteer teacher in East San Jose.
Flickr photo by stevepoiznerforgovernor2010
As a publishing phenomenon, the book’s trajectory resembled one of those Goldman Sachs IPOs that Meg Whitman used to flip back in her days at eBay.
Just like an initial public offering, “Mount Pleasant” started strong – opening at No. 5 on the New York Times bestseller list April 10.
Then, like a stock that’s been pumped and is in the process of being dumped, “Mount Pleasant” went into free fall. In five days it tumbled 28 points to No. 33 on the Times list, Capitol Weekly reports.
Eight days after that, it dropped off the charts entirely. In stock market terms, “Mount Pleasant” had cratered.
What was that all about?
In a piece that is part reportage and part informed speculation, writer Malcolm Maclachian suggests that the book’s meteoric course might have occurred because “Poizner or his gubernatorial campaign bought up enough copies to boost the book, briefly, to the highest echelon of literary success.”
Maclachian quotes a Republican college student from San Diego who got a free copy in the mail from Amazon and called the online bookseller to find out what was going on. The student said he was told he was one of 250 people who were getting free copies of the book courtesy of an employee of a local PR firm. The PR man also was associated with “ResultSource Inc.,” a Carlsbad firm that specializes in book marketing. “Let ResultSource launch your next book as a New York Times bestseller,” it advertises.
The Poizner campaign wouldn’t talk to Capitol Weekly. But in an appearance on Public Radio International's “This American Life,” host Ira Glass “asked Poizner if he or his campaign had bought a bunch of copies to boost sales,” the program’s blog reports.
“At that time, Mr. Poizner confirmed that the campaign did buy copies for supporters, but said he could not provide a specific number.”
Glass, who is based in Chicago, hated the book. From talking to “people in the neighborhood who know the neighborhood,” he said he concluded that Mt. Pleasant High is actually “an average school in an average neighborhood.” But Poizner misportrayed it as a violent, gang-ridden hell hole, Glass claimed.
Poizner insisted his portrait of a troubled school is accurate. Criticism from the locals (high school kids marched in protest during a book signing at Eastridge Mall) was to be expected, he said.
“I don’t think it’s a surprise that people who are in that neighborhood bristle at blunt observations,” he said on the radio.
On Amazon.com, “Mount Pleasant” was at No. 25,905 last night. It has had 12 customer reviews. Six gave the book one star, the lowest rating. “Lies – this guy just made things up, slandering a school and its students for his own political gain,” wrote a reviewer who calls himself “No.”
The other six reviewers gave the book the top rating of five stars. Reviewers included “Needssumbayslaps,” who wrote, “I WENT TO MT. PLEASANT HIGH SCHOOL AND WHAT HE SAYS IS TRUE! AS STUDENT WHO WAS ALMOST SHOT WITH A DOUBLE BARREL SHOTGUN ON CAMPUS! AFTER THAT I NEVER WENT BACK.”
Amazon says readers who buy “Mt. Pleasant” online often also buy, “Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation," by Jason Matteras. On Amazon, it’s at No. 990.
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