Why Fish Don't Exist

Archival Summary & Scope

*Why Fish Don't Exist* by Radiolab cohost Lulu Miller, hailed as a "remarkable" (*Los Angeles Times*) and "seductive" (*The Wall Street Journal*) Best Book of 2020 (*The Washington Post*, NPR, and more), is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder. Miller weaves the biography of David Starr Jordan, a turn-of-the-century taxonomist possessed by ordering the natural world, whose colossal fish collection was repeatedly annihilated by disaster—from lightning and fire to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Despite these cataclysms, Jordan obsessively rebuilt his life's work, each time with a new, baffling innovation. Intertwining Jordan's relentless quest with her own life's unraveling, NPR reporter Lulu Miller reexamines his unwavering perseverance. Initially viewing him as a fool, Miller comes to see Jordan as a surprising guide for navigating a fractured world. Part scientific adventure, part memoir, and part biography, *Why Fish Don't Exist* is a wondrous fable about the human search for meaning and how to persevere when chaos prevails.