Princes of New York

Tom West, the rumpled, young, headmaster of Christ Church School, loves his job on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and the students and faculty love him right back. But when board member Robert Cattivo—a high-flying real estate magnate who worships Machiavelli and mentored Trump—threatens the integrity of Christ Church, the principled headmaster is thrown into the biggest challenge of his life. Will Cattivo succeed in corrupting Tom, as well as his treasured institution, selling trustee seats and admission slots to the highest bidder and kicking the headmaster to the curb? Must he abandon his integrity to keep his job and preserve the legendary school’s high standards? Aided by a beautiful Met curator and an ailing bishop, Tom goes up against a band of ruthless barbarians to save the soul of a legendary school—and in the process, he rediscovers his own humanity.
Robin Lester, the former head of Trinity School in New York, also taught and headed schools in San Francisco, Chicago, and Minneapolis. His OpEds and articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and The Dictionary of American Biography. STAGG’S UNIVERSITY, Lester’s cultural history of American college football, won the Book of the Year award from the North American Society for Sport History. Lester has a PhD. in history from the University of Chicago.
PRINCES is a real page-turner, and Robin Lester is the perfect writer to expose the tender underbelly of New York's private school scene--here, he lifts the curtain to show us how a gifted headmaster pulls it off … Or doesn't.
John McEnroe Author of You Cannot Be Serious
Head of School Tom West is a hero for our times in this witty and sparklingly literate evocation of the way we live now.
Peter Blauner, author of Slow Motion Riot and Slipping Into Darkness
Fiendishly clever, funny, entertaining, and often downright mischievous, Princes offers the compelling behind the scenes intrigue of a private school's headmaster ultimately going to the mat with the Machiavellian one-percenters of Manhattan.
Julie Holland, MD author, Weekends At Bellevue: Nine Years on the Nightshift at the Psych ER
Princes is hilarious, cutting and utterly entertaining. This Machiavellian tale is told by a consummate insider and, in the style of Bonfire of the Vanities, will leave certain readers scrambling to discern what facts may lie beneath the fiction.
Daphne Uviller, author, Super in the City and Hotel No Tell
Princes is an engrossing, authentic story about an independent school in the complicated, exciting and exhilarating city of New York.
Edes Gilbert, former head of the Spence School, New York; author, Alone Together