A Steroid Hit The Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and other Howlers - Martin Toseland

'A Steroid Hit The Earth' is a catalogue of errors, omissions, mistakes and other disasters, ranging from the straight typo or the ambiguous statement to the downright bizarre.

Each demonstrates a sub-editor or proofreader taking their eye off the ball, to the delight of millions, every single example preserving the humble misprint as a perpetual source of 'schadenfreude'. From the holy typo of 1631, when Barker and Lucas' 'Wicked Bible' exhorted people to commit adultery by omitting a crucial 'not' from the seventh commandment, 'A Steroid Hit The Earth' reaches back in time to the days before modern printing and our own spell-check obsessed age.

It is a joyous and irreverent paean to gaffes of all sorts that have caused confusion, consternation and outright offence among readers, incorporating confessions from insiders - retired newspapermen and typesetters - for the inside story on both what was and what might have been. A highly entertaining and deeply resonant book, appealing to the 'there but for the grace of...' feeling in all of us. It will be proof-read six times before publication.