Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union early 20th century called themselves 'oologists', though the distinction between the notionally scientific discipline of oology and simple egg-collecting was blurred. Identification of any but the most common and distinctive species usually entailed the collection of specimens to be made into study skins. Modern field-guides did not exist and few people could afford the massive multi-volume, lavishly illustrated, handbooks of John Gould and Gregory Mathews. However, both Archibald J. Campbell and Alfred North had produced comprehensive guides to what was known about the nests and eggs of Australian birds, with illustrations of the eggs rather than of the birds themselves,
The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River". "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage