Angela asked:

Bryson asserts on page 86 that "Each year, 40,000 Americans die from gunshot wounds, the great majority of them by accident." I'm no expert on statistics, but according to the basic Google search I just did, 62% of American gun deaths are suicides, 35% are homicides, and the remaining 3% are accidental. Last time I checked, 3% did not qualify as a "great majority." Why did this kind of error go to print unchecked?

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7 years ago
5 answers

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Naomi Keep in mind the book was published in 1999, so the statistics were probably accurate for at that time.

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Jackie I'm shocked that THIS caught your attention but the part where he reports a barber suggested "reattaching" some hair--which happens much earlier in the book--didn't. Bryson is serving up his impressions, not iron-clad investigatory reporting.

He may also consider suicides as tragic accidents, given that many who survive suicide attempts regret them in the moment of the attempt.

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Pixie I also think he is a bit tongue-in-cheek with his comments generally, not sarcastic but just making his points in a roundabout way that should not be taken too literally. In the book's preface, he apologises and disclaims his writing due to the demand made on him by his publisher to produce a book rapidly.

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J. Schlackman While this is one of the more egregious errors, it's far from the only incorrect statistic in the book. I suspect the origin of each chapter as a serialized entertainment column in a newspaper meant that fact-checking wasn't a priority, and given that the material had already run in print once, the editorial process for the book was more focused on arrangement than anything else.

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