There’s nothing like the smell of a brand new hardcover, fresh from the printer: the bland acidity of pristine paper; the inky sharpness of the dustjacket; a subtle hint of glue.

The hardcover in question this week is Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms, a non-fiction meditation on animals and plants that have remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.

Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms was written by the British naturalist Richard Fortey, who was senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London until he retired in 2006.

Since his so-called retirement, Mr. Fortey has found time to travel the globe in search of “animals that time has left behind,” a formulation he much prefers to “living fossils.” Here’s what he has to say on that unfortunate phrase:

Up to this point I have avoided describing the horseshoe crab as a “living fossil.” This is not only because I am chary about using a phrase that is a paradox and an oxymoron rolled into one, but also because it is a misleading description…

You have to love an author who can deploy “chary” with such confidence and ease.

There’s a lot to admire in the opening pages of the book, which plunges the reader headlong into a huge nighttime horseshoe crab orgy at the edge of the Delaware Bay. There’s nothing like an orgy to kick-start a narrative.

But I did have a problem at the top of page six, where, in an off-hand bit of scene-setting, Mr. Fortey writes the following:

Delaware car number plates bear the legend “The first state,” acknowledging the fact that it was the first to sign up to the Declaration of Independence.

Huh?

A man can tolerate a Brit calling an American license plate a “car number plate.” After all, the author’s a guest in our land. One should be chary of mocking a visitor in matters of language.

But I’m pretty sure you won’t find the signature of Delaware anywhere on the Declaration of Independence — a document that was signed by men, not states.

As a matter of fact, Delaware is called “the first state” because it was the first to ratify the United States Constitution in 1787.

No, Mr. Fortey was mistaken, and it bothered me. There shouldn’t be an error on page 6 of an otherwise excellent book.

So I did what anyone would do: I went to the Web, found the phone number for the book’s publicist, and asked to be put in touch with an editor at Knopf.

About fifteen minutes later, a breathless young woman called me. She’d been told about the mistake on page 6, and she wanted to thank me for pointing it out.

“We should have caught that one,” she said.

I silently agreed, but I tried to make her feel better about it. “The only reason I know about ‘the first state’ is because my family went to Delaware beaches on vacation, and there were historical markers that explained the motto. But I think it’s important to get these little details right. An error like this one undermines the writer’s authority.”

Apparently, my words weren’t very comforting. The young editor was deeply offended. “I don’t think it undermines his authority,” she sniffed. “I hope our other readers are more forgiving.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m sure that the rest of the book is beautifully edited. My point in calling was to make sure the mistake was corrected for future editions.”

She assured me it would be, and that was the end of that.

But the mistake — and the young editor’s defensiveness about it — stuck with me. A serious non-fiction book published by an excellent house like Knopf is exactly the place to look for accuracy, even in the little details. General readers count on it. That’s why the text is proofed by several layers of editors, and again by professional fact-checkers.

It used to be that editors mediated all sorts of information, from encyclopedias to newspapers. The idea was that it was important to “get it right.” Letting a factual error slip through the cracks was a great embarrassment.

Alas, the day of the eagle-eyed editor is past (this newspaper notwithstanding…) Encyclopedias are online entities now, and “crowd-sourced,” meaning they are edited group-wise. News is a twenty-four hour affair. With that much content flowing through the pipeline, who has time for deep fact-checking?

And don’t even get me started about the fetid waters of our public discourse, where an odd fact or two can occasionally be spotted floating in the hot partisan murk. Unfortunately, the debate has sunk to a level below factuality, since the two sides can’t even seem to agree on what constitutes a fact.

I happen to believe in facts. And I’m counting on you, dear reader, to help keep me honest. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if I unwittingly err. I happen to believe in getting it right.

Call me a living fossil.

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 26 April 2012

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com