The Most Amazing Book Editing Error?

I seem to be making a speciality of catching editors' mistakes these days. A week ago, I ridiculed a weekly's ability to get five out of six captions wrong at "Newsweek's Jaw-Dropping Erratum." Today, the subject is book editors, specifically those at Columbia University Press.

	Title page of The Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism.

The book they messed up is the just-published Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism. As listed on the title page and the website, it was edited by Olivier Roy and Antoine Sfeir. But today, a "Correction Notice" reached me by mail from Derek Warker, an associate publicist at Columbia University Press, dated October 18. It informs me that

Olivier Roy is not an editor of The Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism. … Unfortunately, the book was printed with an error and I am writing to you today to provide you with the correction. The correct citation of the book should be: The Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism is edited by Antoine Sfeir. … Olivier Roy is a contributor to the volume and should not be cited as editor.

Comment: Authors and readers have complained for years about the decline in the quality of editing of American books, especially scholarly ones. This mistake dramatically reveals the extent of the problem. (October 22, 2007)

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