I received a copy of 'California, A History' for Christmas. This book is authored by Dr. Kevin Starr, a former Harvard professor and California State Librarian. Pretty good credentials, however I didn't get very far into it (page 9 to be exact) before I ran into the following statement: "Forty-One California mountains rise to more than ten thousand feet". I think someone needs to do a re-count.

sierraman wrote:I received a copy of 'California, A History' for Christmas. This book is authored by Dr. Kevin Starr, a former Harvard professor and California State Librarian. Pretty good credentials, however I didn't get very far into it (page 9 to be exact) before I ran into the following statement: "Forty-One California mountains rise to more than ten thousand feet". I think someone needs to do a re-count.

A lot of publishers don't employ proofreaders/fact checkers any more, so I don't find it odd when I run across something like this in a newly-published book.

Not so wrong when you require 500 meters of prominence to define a "mountain":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountain_peaks_of_California#Highest_major_summits. Maybe that's what he was going on, not being an expert?

However on the same page, more damningly, he calls Mount Whitney the "second highest mountain in the continental United States"...

Whatever the errors, Kevin Starr seems to have had a pretty remarkable life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Starr

A bit hard, for me personally, to take seriously a list of prominent California peaks which doesn't include Mt. Brewer, any peak at all on the White Divide, hardly any peaks in Yosemite NP - I could go on. Seems like a set of arbitrary criteria which doesn't serve any particular purpose, with the possible exception of misleading historians.

Perhaps he meant non-Sierra peaks. Still off but closer.

https://www.peakbagger.com/list.aspx?lid=21323

The PB list includes nothing from the Sierra, clearly not what the author was after. I think Romain was right on - that list has 42 summits over 10,000ft (and a higher prominence criteria than usual). Wikipedia is a quick go-to for things like this. It would be easy to imagine the author doing a quick look-up and reading that as 41 summits.

Maybe we could give a pass to a freshman reporter writing an article for a local newspaper relying on Wickpedia for a quick fact (or, in this case, a non-fact). But I think we expect something more from a distinguished author like Dr. Starr.