A Review of The Era of Allan Phillips: A Festschrift
This book honors the life and accomplishments of Allan R. Phillips (1914–1996), a prominent taxonomist and collector who for over six decades actively studied North American birds, particularly those of the southwestern United States and Mexico. The volume is introduced by two papers dealing with Phillips’ life, character, and personality by two of Phillips’ close professional associates: an affectionate biography prepared by Bob Dickerman, the compiler, and a long essay by John Hubbard. In the same vein, Roy Johnson reviewed ARP’s specific contributions to Arizona ornithology. Phillips emerges as a study in high contrasts — at once a brilliant, indefatigable colleague and mentor with exhaustive knowledge of the birds and literature in the regions where he worked but at the same time a person knotted with so many complexes that irascibility, abrasiveness, and paranoia came to be the features that defined his interactions with a significant number of America’s ornithologists.
