Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life

When Lulu Miller-s relationship falls apart, she turns to an unlikely figure for guidance - the 19th-century naturalist, David Starr Jordan. Pouring over his diaries, Lulu discovers a man obsessed with nature-s hidden order, devoted to studying shimmering scales and sailing the world in search of new species of fish.

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake sends more than a thousand of Jordan-s specimens, housed in glass jars, plummeting to the ground, his story of resilience leads Lulu to believe she has found the antidote to life-s unpredictability. But lurking behind the tale of this great taxonomist lies a darker story waiting to be told: one about the human cost of attempting to define the form of things unknown. An idiosyncratic, personal approach to this fascinating scientific biography, Why Fish Don-t Exist is an astonishing tale of newfound love, scientific discovery and how to live well in a world governed by chaos.