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| | Sub-Imprint | Simon & Schuster |
| | | | | | | | | | Category 1 | Biography & Autobiography |
| | | Category 3 | Biography & Autobiography |
| | | Inserts/Illus | b&w illus throughout; stepback |
| | Territory | US, Canada, Open Market excluding EU |
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| | |  | About the BookOther FormatsProduct Images David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—which sent more than a thousand discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered.
Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish that he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world.
When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool—a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.
Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a wondrous fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.
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| “What a delightful book... Ms. Miller [spins] a tale so seductive that I read her book in one sitting.”
— The Wall Street Journal
“Some years back, Lulu Miller disappeared down a very strange rabbit hole that led her to places neither she nor you would ever be able to anticipate. I highly recommend you follow her down the hole, because of her singular and gigantic gifts as a writer and storyteller, but also because of what's down there: love, chaos, strychnine, a gun, dangerous delusions, heroic dandelions, a cow, a snorkel mask through which grander truths are revealed... This book is perfect, just perfect. It's both lyrical and learned, personal and political, small and huge, quirky and profound.”
— Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff
“Completely entrancing.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine
“Riveting and rollicking… total magic.”
— Garden & Gun
“I want to live at this book’s address: the intersection of history and biology and wonder and failure and sheer human stubbornness. What a sumptuous, surprising, dark delight.”
— Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
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| Lulu Miller is the cohost of Radiolab, cofounder of NPR’s Invisibilia, and a Peabody Award–winning science journalist. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, VQR, Orion, Electric Literature, Catapult, and beyond. Her favorite spot on earth is Humpback Rocks.
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