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.