‘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.
