Errata in my books
The following are errors I’ve discovered in my books after publication. If you find any that aren’t on this list, please let me know!
Page 345: My wording implies that the quotation is from Averroes. It isn’t; it’s a quotation from Etienne Gilson, who was paraphrasing Averroes.
Page 250: in describing Almanzo’s trip to get the grain in The Long Winter, I say “Royal accompanies him.” Actually it’s his friend Cap Garland who does so.
Page 470 note 117 incorrectly states the date of the letter from Paterson to Rand (which contained the Averroes reference) as circa December 1943. This should say circa October. (It is correctly identified as October on page 345).
Page 269: Katharine Wright’s name is misspelled Katherine.
Page 333: I refer to Louis Armstrong’s song “W.P.A.,” a sly attack on Roosevelt’s welfare program, and I say that Columbia records “received a call from Washington and withdrew the record.” According to a contemporaneous Time magazine article I’d not known about when writing the book, the leader of the effort to ban the record was actually the communist jazz critic John Hammond, who used his connections with organized labor to get the record taken off of store shelves.
Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man
On page 135, I write that the only times Frederick Douglass has been portrayed on screen were in Glory and in the series Underground. I just learned that he also appears in the 2014 film Freedom, where he’s portrayed by Byron Utley. (Subsequent to the publication of my book, Douglass was also portrayed in Harriet by Tory Kittles and in The Good Lord Bird by Daveed Diggs.) Also, I’m told that Douglass was also portrayed in a 2010 TV movie called Frederick Douglass: Pathway from Slavery to Freedom, and in the 1985 miniseries North and South, in which he was played by Robert Guillaume.
Conscience of The Constitution
On page 169, note 69, I say that Justice Samuel Chase was Justice Salmon Chase’s great-grandfather. This was in error. They were not related; Salmon did have a great-grandfather named Samuel, but he was a different guy. Who knew? But I am correct in saying that Salmon was paraphrasing Justice Samuel Chase in this paragraph.
I also made a number of minor corrections before the paperback edition appeared, but they’re just typos, so I won't list them here.
Chief Justice John Vaughan’s name is misspelled on p. 99.
On p. 67, I say the Colfax Massacre happened on the same day the Slaughterhouse Cases were announced. Slaughterhouse was announced April 14, 1873. Off by a day: the Colfax Massacre was on April 13. (People often get the date of Slaughterhouse wrong. It appears in the 1872 volume of the U.S. Reports (vol. 83) because it was argued in the 1872 term. But the opinion itself says it was announced in April of 1873.)
On p. 178, n. 69, Hurtado is misspelled Hurdado.
On p. 357, note 49, the article “Stephen Field: Frontier Justice Or Justice on the Natural Rights Frontier” was co-authored by me and John C. Eastman.
On p. 321, n. 171, I thank Henry Weismann’s granddaughter Ann W. Gehring for the information about Weismann, when it was actually sent to me by his great-great granddaughter, Mary Lucy.
On p. 313 n. 29, in the quotation from Aristotle, the word δουλος is incorrectly spelled δουλοs, with a Roman S instead of a Greek sigma.
On p. 142, I say that the Oklahoma commission charged with issuing licenses for ice delivery companies was “staffed by representatives of companies that were already in the ice delivery business.” This is not accurate. The commission was the state’s Corporation Commission, and there’s nothing in the case indicating that the board was made up of existing ice company managers. Rather, the law allowed existing ice companies to bring suit against potential competitors, and it was this standing provision that the Court was referring to when it said that “the practical tendency of the restriction, as the trial court suggested in the present case, is to shut out new enterprises, and thus create and foster monopoly in the hands of existing establishments, against, rather than in aid of, the interest of the consuming public.”
On p. 222, I say that Cosette in Les Miserables sells her teeth and hair, when in fact, it’s her mother, Fantine, who does this.
On p. 3, I refer to the incident of Frederick Douglass’s first wages being earned in Rochester, New York. In fact, this incident occurred in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
On p. 7, I say Adkins v. Children’s Hospital was a 1932 decision, transposing two numbers; the case was decided in 1923.
On p. 300 n. 32, the date for Madison’s “Property” essay is given as Mar. 29, 1892. Obviously that should be Mar. 29, 1792.
Norbert Wiener’s name is misspelled Weiner in a few places.
On p. 109, I describe Szilard’s insight regarding the chain reaction and refer to the speech by Lord Rutherford, but attribute it to Chadwick. This is such a bizarre error, I’m mystified by how that made it through. I knew it was Rutherford. How could this mistake have escaped the multiple edits and re-edits? Proof that something will always make it through, somehow.
On p. 207, I relate how Bronowski gave a heated response to a question on the TV show Any Questions? and that he refused to return to the show for several months afterward. Given my phrasing, some readers might think I was referring to the TV show Brains Trust. I probably should have been clearer, but it can be confusing, because Brains Trust was initially called Any Questions? but the name was then changed to Brains Trust. Then, later, another show went on the air which was called Any Questions? and it was on this show that the incident I relate occurred. It was not long afterwards, however, that he quit Brains Trust as well.
On p. 10 I say that Bronowski and Samuel Beckett “coedited'“ a book. I meant to say that Bronowski edited a book in which Beckett’s work appeared (European Caravan, which was Beckett's first appearance in a book). But Beckett did not work as a co-editor on that book.