"Plagiarism" correction and elaboration

It's been pointed out to me that my assertion that I hadn't read Balkin's book was incorrect -- or, at least, that if I hadn't read it I shouldn't have written a blurb for the jacket! Indeed, I did read the book in manuscript for purposes of writing a blurb (although it remains true that I haven't read "the book" understood to refer to the thing between hard covers). [I don't blurb books that I haven't read at least in manuscript.]

This, though, actually supports a couple of the points I made. (1) I simply forgot that I had read the manuscript a couple of years ago. Were I still working on something about Brown v. Board of Education, and had one of the book's chapters put something I wanted to say in an interesting way, it's entirely possible that I would generate the same phrasing, thinking it was my own. (2) The book contains a narrative of the case's background. There are a limited number of events to deal with, they happened in the order they did, and there are therefore a limited number of ways to provide the narrative. Similarities at least in presentation are inevitable. Combined with (1), one might even find things that look like "copying" even though there was no conscious appropriation of someone else's work.