[Book review] Life histories of North American cardinals, grosbeaks, buntings, towhees, finches, sparrows, and allies

The completion of an ornithological series as important as the Bent Life Histories is an exciting event. Here is a series of 21 volumes, spanning a history of nearly 60 years from inception to completion, containing over 9,500 text pages of information about North American birds, largely the work of one man – who was not professionally an ornithologist. One cannot well review the final number of such a series without considering the series as a whole and that volume relative to the rest of the series, when the authorship of the last is different and varied.