A history teacher at Horace Mann School in Riverdale has used his intimate view of the city's movers and shakers to pen a novel about a leafy campus in New York City where 17-year olds drive Mercedes cars, take prescription drugs to boost their academic performance, and turn to seduction and plagiarism to guarantee a slot in the Ivy League.

"Academy X" is hitting bookstores this week and some parents are calling its author, Andrew Trees, a regular Benedict Arnold.















"I think this is the biggest self-righteous, arrogant traitor walking the face of the earth," a member of the board of trustees at the nearby Riverdale Country School, Victoria Goldman, said. "He's sending up the entire community that he works with, and that takes nerve."



The city's private schools - where influential parents battle for everything from better grades for their children to asking federal judges to intervene in disputes - are known to be tight-lipped when it comes to what happens within their halls. The head of school at Horace Mann and several other administrators did not return numerous calls seeking comment yesterday, and some teachers also refused to talk about the book.

On its copyright page, "Academy X" is listed as being in the "Rich People - Fiction" category. Tuition at the school is almost $30,000 a year. Celebrity parents at the school include the state attorney general, Elliot Spitzer, and an entertainment mogul, Sean "Diddy" Combs.

To build some buzz, the author was listed as anonymous on early copies of the book. Mr. Trees's name was added when Bloomsbury officially released it.



In a pre-emptive strike, Mr. Trees published a letter to the Horace Mann community in the student newspaper last week, alerting it to the imminent release of his novel.

"My goal in writing Academy X is simply to satirize the follies that occur at virtually every elite private - and many public - high schools these days, particularly the insanity that accompanies the college admission process," he wrote.

The protagonist of the novel, John Spencer, is an English teacher who struggles to teach Jane Austen, but is often distracted by the students' "exposed thongs and butt-skimming skirts." A high-maintenance parent tries to bully him to boost a grade to A-minus from B-plus, while another sets him up in a rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper West Side.



In an interview yesterday, Mr. Trees, 37, said that in his five years as a history teacher at Horace Mann he noticed a lot of "entertaining things that would make a good story."

"The book is a novel. It's not meant to be Horace Mann, but it definitely draws on my experiences here," he said.

As a graduate of the Deerfield Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts, Mr. Trees is no stranger to the world of the wealthy. He also received a degree from Princeton and a doctorate in history from the University of Virginia.


The onslaught of tell-all books about the children who reside in the city's wealthiest zip codes and the people who educate them has some schools now talking about asking teachers to sign nondisclosure forms.

"The Nanny Diaries," which centers on nannies dealing with the city's wealthy 4-year-olds, kicked off the slew of books. The most recent additions include "Glamorous Disasters," a novel by a 27-year-old Harvard graduate, Eliot Schrefer, about an Upper East Side SAT tutor who rakes in $395 apiece to boost the scores of 16-year-olds. In "The Ivy Chronicles," author Karen Quinn takes readers inside the insane world of what parents will do to get their tots into kindergarten.



Mr. Trees called himself an "equal opportunity satirist" who makes fun of parents, teachers, and students. So far, he says that the head of school is laughing along with him. "His reaction has been supportive. I know that he's concerned about what people will say about it, but he told me that he thought the book was funny," Mr. Trees said.

If the book generates problems for Horace Mann, Mr. Trees said he might be out of a job. Other private school principals said they couldn't believe that he would be invited back.

"As far as I know, I'm still coming back to teach," Mr. Trees said. "To be honest about it, clearly not everybody at school is happy about the book. I'm hopeful that once the book comes out and people read it, it will be fine."

In the meantime he has at least a few supporters. "Some parents are fulfilling a fantasy life through their children," a parent at Horace Mann who asked not to be identified said about the book release. "Some parents are embarrassingly over-involved and become stereotypes of themselves. So many of them are drooping with money and want everybody to know it."