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

Lulu Miller

4.20 · Rating details · 21,156 ratings · 3,396 reviews

A wondrous debut from an extraordinary new voice in nonfiction, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder.

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 ...more

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Hardcover, 225 pages

Published April 14th 2020 by Simon Schuster

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Aug 19, 2020 Olive Fellows (abookolive) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites-2020, favorites-all-time, memoir, biography

There are books, and then there are the life-changing sorts of books. For me, this is one of the latter.

This is a memoir that details a time in the author's life when she was sorely in need of a role model. She had recently made a huge, life-ruining mistake, destroying a relationship she valued, when she came across a story of how a historical figure, taxonomist David Starr Jordan, in the wake of an earthquake, starting pinning nametags to the dead fish specimens he worked so hard to catalog so ...more

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Apr 22, 2020 Hayley DeRoche rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: beyond-white-cismale-voices, favorites

I cannot fully express how perfect this book was for reading during COVID-19 crisis. It's perfect. It's Chaos, it's order, it's loss, it's love. ...more

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May 22, 2020 Elyse Walters rated it liked it

Audiobook read by the author, Lulu Miller

This was a book that I appreciated more than really enjoyed.
.... My mind drifted off to much...
.... it took me forever to understand what the author was trying to say. She was trying to figure out chaos from Jordon, ( he had plenty in his life), and how it affected her life.
....it’s still a little puzzling why Lulu picked David Starr Jordon to study in relationship to her needs.
....Lulu thought Jordon had a handle on life - and she might learn how to d ...more

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Jul 13, 2021 Ken Liu rated it it was amazing

Absolutely wondrous.

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Jan 07, 2020 Stephen rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020

I wanted to like this more. Miller is a gifted writer and her subject is fascinating, and she does a good job of untangling the various threads that make David Starr Jordan both compelling and fascinating.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the tone of hokey cuteness. (Miller's bio says she is a "frequent contributor to Radiolab, which I find nearly insufferable for this exact tone.) The jokey tone is at best irritating, and at worst, as when the writer refers to a dictator responsible for the d ...more

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Jun 22, 2020 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it

Shelves: nfr-2020

Her life unraveling, a failed suicide attempt, and NPR reporter Lulu Miller finds herself searching for a way out of the chaos of her life. She becomes fascinated with David Starr Jordan, a taxidermist, who spent his life up to then, collecting and labeling fish. He traveled the world to find as many different examples, it was his life's work. A collection he would lose most of in the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. What fascinated Miller was that he didn't give up, he saved what he could, fou ...more

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Jul 02, 2022 Lindsay rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, read-for-university, owned, nonfiction-or-memoir, 2022

Trigger Warnings : Rape, Eugenics, Nazism, Forced Sterilization, Racism, Ableism, Childhood Incarceration. I probably missed some of them in my list but just know this covers a lot of hard to read topics.

I annotated and highlighted .... that's how much I loved this book.

I was tentative at times; I was only reading this in preparation for a convocation coming's up this fall for uni. However, this won me over in a somewhat disjointed but ultimately elegant blending of nonfiction (which I ten Trigger Warnings : Rape, Eugenics, Nazism, Forced Sterilization, Racism, Ableism, Childhood Incarceration. I probably missed some of them in my list but just know this covers a lot of hard to read topics.

I annotated and highlighted .... that's how much I loved this book.

I was tentative at times; I was only reading this in preparation for a convocation coming's up this fall for uni. However, this won me over in a somewhat disjointed but ultimately elegant blending of nonfiction (which I tend to hate)... a biography of David Starr Jordan and a memoir of the author herself.

Initially, as an aspiring anthropologist and a uni student, I kept thinking about all the contemporaries or predecessors of Jordan that would have been more interesting for me to read about like the more obvious taxonomist - Linnaeus. I didn't really care about the life story of someone who studied fish, however, Jordan's profession and focus didn't stop this narrative from exploring deep important philosophical and political beliefs that ran head long into ethical issues. In many ways, Jordan's inability to only focus on his fish pushed him headlong into one of America's most shameful "scientific" developments... eugenics.

My junior year of high school, I took AP Gov and we discussed required court cases that overturned or upheld prior precedent. The case from this book (Buck v. Bell) came up in our discussion of Roe v. Wade as a case that was somewhat overturned by Roe, which has been dealt a fatal blow this week (I tend to avoid politics on here because we're all here to read books, however, this framed my context by which I read this book). But to focus specifically, (view spoiler)

To be honest, I thought this review would go in a different direction but I got to writing and this is what stuck with me. However, I will not leave this review having failed to discuss the interwoven memoir found here. At first, I was confused why the hell Miller found her muse/role model in an old white former President of Stanford who was obsessed with fish. But in truth, this wasn't a matter of having a role model but being able to find the positives of someone (the fish) and the failings (eugenics, etc.) that permeate everyone. Miller attempts to reconcile the nihilistic philosophy of her father and her own hope and depression for the future. In the process, she wrote a book that touched my soul and made me cry because it gave me hope... in the similarities of our siblings and our mutual identity as bisexual woman. At 20 years old, this book reminds to have a drive for the future but also be realistic per the fact that life will be hard.

A unexpected 5 stars for the "fish" and the bis. ...more

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Sep 10, 2020 Tori Thompson rated it it was ok

I had a hard time with this one. It was well written, felt well researched, and the audiobook was a solid performance by the author. I'm not surprised at the book's overall rating, and think if it had covered almost any other subject I would've enjoyed it a lot more. But I went into it already knowing that David Starr Jordan was a bastard eugenicist, and it made reading the first 75% of this book and its glowing account of his life and work and perseverance uncomfortable to the point of excrucia I had a hard time with this one. It was well written, felt well researched, and the audiobook was a solid performance by the author. I'm not surprised at the book's overall rating, and think if it had covered almost any other subject I would've enjoyed it a lot more. But I went into it already knowing that David Starr Jordan was a bastard eugenicist, and it made reading the first 75% of this book and its glowing account of his life and work and perseverance uncomfortable to the point of excruciating. By the time we finally got to reckoning with the profound damage he'd done, I'd given up hope that the author was even going to address it at all; and though I was impressed by how it was eventually handled and how thoroughly those beliefs were condemned, it felt like far too little too late. It felt to me as though the author was more (or at least equally) distraught at discovering her hero was a flawed individual than at the immense and immeasurable horror his beliefs and power and actions enabled him to inflict. And that's not even counting the fact that he definitely murdered that lady, I mean, holy shit this dude was literal trash.

I think a lot of people will be able to enjoy this book much more than I did, and I don't really fault them for it. As a neurodivergent woman of color with a chronic pain disorder, I'm honestly not particularly interested in listening to white women assuaging their guilt over their "problematic faves" on a good day, let alone when that person would have actively called for my forced sterilization (if not death) on the basis of my existence and then went on to directly enable the state's ability to do so. Gotta say, that makes it pretty difficult to engage with descriptions of him as a young man as "sultry" or sympathetic in any imaginable way.

If this book had been any longer, I probably wouldn't have finished it; I think it was the perfect length for the amount of information there was to get across. And the writing is really engaging, even if it was a little too quippy and personable for my usual preferences in nonfiction. I kept listening hoping that the text would eventually address the racism and bigotry, and technically we got there eventually and I do believe it was addressed well. But it just felt a little too dismissive for my tastes; being one of the fathers of American eugenics is not merely an unfortunate footnote in the life of an otherwise-decent man, and I would've liked to see that acknowledged at every turn rather than being used as an emotional "gotcha" toward the end of the book. And I had a difficult time engaging with the author's journey of self-reflection that seemed to be the real crux of the story(view spoiler). I keep ending up railroaded by white podcast/NPR personalities writing what I think is going to be a nonfiction book and turns out to be a camouflaged memoir, and I'm really over it tbh. ...more

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May 13, 2021 Blaine rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021, from-library

When I give up the fish, I get, at long last, that thing I had been searching for: a mantra, a trick, a prescription for hope. I get the promise that there are good things in store. Not because I deserve them. Not because I worked for them. But because they are as much a part of Chaos as destruction and loss. Life, the flip side of death. Growth, of rot.

Why Fish Don’t Exist is one part memoir, one part discussion of science and its history, and one part biography of David Starr Jordan. Jordan li

When I give up the fish, I get, at long last, that thing I had been searching for: a mantra, a trick, a prescription for hope. I get the promise that there are good things in store. Not because I deserve them. Not because I worked for them. But because they are as much a part of Chaos as destruction and loss. Life, the flip side of death. Growth, of rot.

Why Fish Don’t Exist is one part memoir, one part discussion of science and its history, and one part biography of David Starr Jordan. Jordan lived a rather remarkable life as a scientist and taxonomist who later became the first President of Stanford University. Yet during his life, he relentlessly overcame the personal losses of his brother, a wife, a daughter, and professional losses as his original records and sample collections were destroyed by a fire in the 1890s, and then destroyed again by the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

After her personal life fell apart, the author Lulu Miller begins to research Mr. Jordan to try to understand how he persevered when all seemed lost. As you’d suspect, she finds her answer to how Jordan thrived. What was unexpected was that—at the end of this long search—she largely rejects his answer. While she agrees that his sense of grit and a little bit of positive illusions, i.e. self delusion, were beneficial, she concludes that Jordan’s answer involved a failure to appreciate that his acceptance of Darwinism required giving up his belief that humanity was at the top of a hierarchical ladder and, even worse, a belief in eugenics. Yikes.

Instead, she concludes that people should go on living no matter what because the history of science has shown again and again how little we understand about the world around us. Jordan spent his life cataloguing fish by evolutionary closeness, unwittingly setting in motion the realization among scientists that “fish” isn’t a legitimate category of creature at all.

Why Fish Don’t Exist is a quick read, enhanced by Ms. Miller’s light conversational writing style. Although occasionally treading on heavier subjects (Ms. Miller’s attempted suicide, and I didn’t even mention that Jordan may have gotten away with murder!), it is an optimistic book ultimately about finding hope in the darkness. Recommended, especially to people with an interest in science, but really to anyone going through a difficult time and looking for something hopeful. ...more

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Jan 07, 2021 Megan O'Hara rated it did not like it

Shelves: my-big-fat-catalogue

hmmm...this whole book....is about a eugenicist and it tries to bury the lede and shock you that he is one of the most prominent American eugenicists of all time??? seems like something you would find out, say, googling him and not after mapping some weird life plan over this template set by this man who you can tell sucks before the big *reveal".... but regardless of any of that (🤨) it's full of forced themes, overwrought metaphors, and I cannot believe it is book length given this story probab ...more

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Jan 21, 2021 jasmine sun rated it it was ok

Shelves: memoir-autobiography, science

lulu miller is more writer than historian. this book - and history - suffers for it.

this book is structured in a strange way. each chapter peels back a different facet of jordan's life analogized to her own, though neither are told chronologically. the first half of the book paints jordan as a quirky but sympathetic character, until a sudden descent into covering up jane stanford's murder and advocating for forced sterilization.

here's the problem: jordan was a eugenicist and white supremacist t lulu miller is more writer than historian. this book - and history - suffers for it.

this book is structured in a strange way. each chapter peels back a different facet of jordan's life analogized to her own, though neither are told chronologically. the first half of the book paints jordan as a quirky but sympathetic character, until a sudden descent into covering up jane stanford's murder and advocating for forced sterilization.

here's the problem: jordan was a eugenicist and white supremacist the whole time. from his first academic job at IU to his presidency at stanford, jordan railed against "unfit genes" polluting "the Anglo-Saxon race." even seemingly redeeming or innocuous aspects, like his religion or his pacificism, ultimately served his white supremacy: jordan disliked war because it decimated the "fittest" of the white male genes.

miller's storytelling requires her to first humanize jordan to the reader, aside from his obsession with categorizing fish, then show how this desire for Order caused his eugenicist views. even in the later part, she describes his distaste for the "unfit," but conveniently skips over his stance that the white race was the fittest. but this is ahistorical: centuries before jordan was born, the taxonomies and methods of western science were invented to justify europeans' mental and physical superiority over those they colonized. jordan's racism doesn't prove the flaws with this scientific approach; rather, both phenomena stemmed from the same root cause (centuries of white supremacy). thus, she sacrifices historical accuracy for the sake of a character arc.

this book was also incredibly whitewashed. the chapter on his eugenicist views somehow barely mentioned race, and when it did, just suggested that discrimination against the "unfit" just happened to have racially disproportionate effects. yet eugenics was always a movement about race. racism was the motivation, not the consequence, of these beliefs. and the framing of "how could a little boy become so evil?" - plus the way miller compared jordan's childhood quirks to her own depression - reminded me of how mental health is always used to solicit empathy for white mass shooters. by framing his life this way, she turns systemic problems - the collusion of western racists and scientists - into psychological ones - jordan's refusal to accept that "we don't matter."

i was looking forward to this book a lot as a story of someone whose sins have disappeared into the shadows - his name was emblazoned across the stanford psych building until 2020. instead, i'm disappointed that this book is how he'll live in the popular consciousness. ...more

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Apr 05, 2020 Lexi (Reads and Riesling) rated it it was amazing

On the surface, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a biography of David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist who discovered and named about 20% of the fish known to man. Miller highlights his entire life: from naming stars to naming fish. Jordan was a revolutionary. That’s not to say he did not have his flaws—he had MANY. He was an early proponent of eugenics and encouraged the government to enact legislation that would allow for the legal sterilization of individuals deemed “unfit.” I’m not sure about you, but I di ...more

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Sep 01, 2021 Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Jenna by: Bk Z

Shelves: memoir-biography, lgbtqia, cogito-ergo-sum, history, science-matters, non-fiction

"Chaos is the only sure thing in this world."

I am thankful I learned what this book is about before opening it, rather than just reading it based on the cover. I'd have been disappointed if I'd thought I was going to read a scientific book about fish - er.... non-fish? - and encountered details about the author's personal life and that of taxonomist David Starr Jordan. When I read a science book, I want scientific facts and scientific facts alone.

Why Fish Don't Exist isn't that. Instead, it is ...more

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Jun 28, 2021 Michael Perkins rated it really liked it

This book is a memoir. As an inspiration, the author focuses on naturalist David Starr Jordan, who was a world expert on fish. She admired his grit and determination and the success in his field. He was also the President of Stanford and a suspect in the murder, by poison, of Jane Stanford, wife of Leland. He did have a grudge against Jane, given that she threatened to fire him. Her death was timely in that regard. But the author only discovered belatedly that David Starr Jordan was the founder ...more

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Mar 25, 2020 Gail C. rated it really liked it

When I first opened this book, I was expecting more of a biography on the life and studies of taxonomist and former Stanford University President David Starr Jordan. His work in classifying fish was groundbreaking in his day, marred by the destruction of many of his exhibits in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Once I began reading, I discovered much more. There were many details about David Starr Jordan and his work, at times perhaps more than I would have liked. However, the details were given When I first opened this book, I was expecting more of a biography on the life and studies of taxonomist and former Stanford University President David Starr Jordan. His work in classifying fish was groundbreaking in his day, marred by the destruction of many of his exhibits in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Once I began reading, I discovered much more. There were many details about David Starr Jordan and his work, at times perhaps more than I would have liked. However, the details were given in the context of the author’s own unraveling world. Indeed, she says she started the book seeking answers to her own bouts of depression. She had heard the story of Jordan and wondered what kept him motivated, what caused him to start again in the face of scientific devastation? She outlines some of the situations which created her own emotional turmoil and her hopes for what she would find by studying Jordan’s efforts.
In the middle of the book, the book becomes more of a memoir. Her own experiences of love, loss, and eventually, love again. Her bouts with depression, questions of what contributed to it, and how she might overcome it. In the process of examining her own life and it’s turn around, the book morphs again into a possible self-help type guide where someone inclined might find inspiration to move forward in their own life.
This was an interesting book, and one I would recommend to any reader looking for something complex or a little different. The research Miller conducted in order to write details of Jordan’s life was extensive and there are pages upon pages of references for anyone who is interested in using it or others she details to write a research based paper. There is also some intrigue offered, particularly into the death of Stanford’s co-founder Jane Stanford, in case the reader is looking for a little mystery. While at times I wanted to put the book down for a while, becoming overwhelmed with data, it wasn’t long before I found myself picking it back up again, wondering where it was going to go next.
My thanks to Simon and Schuster Publishers and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an objective review.
...more

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Apr 19, 2020 Akansha rated it did not like it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. For me, this book reads like a generous account of a problematic man, someone who doesn't seem to deserve the generosity bestowed on it by the ‘smitten biographer.’ Admittedly, the author does remark on the fraught legacy of her subject matter towards the end of her story in phrases like:

“That’s how his story ends. David Starr Jordan was allowed to emerge unscathed, unpunished for his sins, because this is the world in which we live. An uncaring world with no sense of cosmic justice encoded anyw ...more

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May 21, 2020 Pascal rated it it was amazing

just read it bro

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Apr 18, 2020 Abby rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, animals-mostly-dogs, memoir, nonfiction, charlottesville, nature

“When I give up the fish, I get, at long last, that thing I had been searching for: a mantra, a trick, a prescription for hope. I get the promise that there are good things in store. Not because I deserve them. Not because I worked for them. But because they are as much a part of Chaos as destruction and loss. Life, the flip side of death. Growth, of rot.”

Incandescent! I read ravenously; Lulu Miller’s winsome prose is addictive. The complicated story of scientist David Starr Jordan merges with M ...more

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Dec 18, 2021 Mimi rated it did not like it

Shelves: nonfiction, did-not-finish, memoir, history, science, 2022, not-for-me

It's weird to read memoirs by people who aren't famous or at least well known to me. So why did I pick this one up? It was a recommendation from one of the librarians at a local branch whom I'd gotten to know a little over the past couple of months. We've been trading recommendations back and forth, and so far, it's been an interesting reading experiment. Not all were hits, but they got me out of many slumps when I couldn't read. Anything. At all.

What made me give this memoir a try, out of seve ...more

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Oct 12, 2021 Krista rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021, nonfiction, biography, memoir

What David Starr Jordan set in motion by practicing the art of taxonomy, by following Darwin’s advice to sort creatures by evolutionary closeness, led to a fateful discovery. In the 1980s taxonomists realized that fish, as a legitimate category of creature, do not exist.
Birds exist.
Mammals exist.
Amphibians exist.
But fish, in particular, do not exist.

Why Fish Don’t Exist is one of those memoirs dressed up as an historical investigation, and in the moment, I was completely fascinated by everyt

What David Starr Jordan set in motion by practicing the art of taxonomy, by following Darwin’s advice to sort creatures by evolutionary closeness, led to a fateful discovery. In the 1980s taxonomists realized that fish, as a legitimate category of creature, do not exist.
Birds exist.
Mammals exist.
Amphibians exist.
But fish, in particular, do not exist.

Why Fish Don’t Exist is one of those memoirs dressed up as an historical investigation, and in the moment, I was completely fascinated by everything Lulu Miller wanted to tell me about her life, what she uncovered about the life of David Starr Jordan (early Ichthyologist and founding President of Stanford University), and how those two lives chimed and clanged together when held up side by side. Miller’s voice is colloquial and chummy, but also philosophical and thoughtful, and I was repeatedly enchanted by her turns of phrase. All of that reflects my reaction in the moment; Miller is a gifted storyteller. But when it was over, it nagged at me that Miller might have been manipulating her narrative in order to conform to a traditional story arc — I doubt very much that Miller didn’t know that Jordan was (view spoiler) until the point in her story that she tells us so — and so I felt a bit manipulated in the end. That doesn’t change the facts of this narrative — all of which I was fascinated to learn — and it doesn’t change the enchantment I felt in the moment — Miller is a very good storyteller — but it nags at me all the same. More loved than not, I’m rounding up to four caveated stars.

What words go here?
Imagine seeing thirty years of your life undone in one instant. Imagine whatever it is you do all day, whatever it is you care about, whatever you foolishly pick and prod at each day, hoping, against all signs that suggest otherwise, that it matters. Imagine finding all the progress you have made on that endeavor smashed and eviscerated at your feet.
Those words go here.

David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) was a prolific taxonomist (discovering and naming nearly a fifth of the fish from around the world known in his times) who was influenced equally by his Puritan upbringing (and belief that order could be discovered within the chaos of God’s creation) and by Charles Darwin (who encouraged biologists to take a scalpel to their specimens in order to discover how systemic similarities reflect relationships on the web of life). Jordan was so successful at collecting unique species, and so busy in his professional life, that by the time he became the first President of Stanford University, his office contained thousands of named, but unrecorded, specimens in jars. And when the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 smashed his entire collection, the story has it that Jordan gritted his teeth and went to work, salvaging what he could and more permanently attaching name tags to those specimens that he recognised.

Maybe Cape Cod is fertile ground for existential transformation. Something about the metals in its sandy soil catalyzing metaphysical shifts — I don’t know. All I know is I, too, had my entire worldview rearranged when I was visiting its shores. It happened when I was about seven years old, and oddly enough, it was that moment that would pave the way for my obsession with David Starr Jordan, that would make him the kind of person I hoped could save me when my life later unraveled.

By contrast, Lulu Miller was raised by her biologist father to be an atheist and to believe that there is no order to the chaos of life; that, in the big picture, her existence mattered very little. Prone to depression and self-harm, when Miller blows up her life as a young adult, it was the anecdote about Jordan getting to work salvaging his collection that gave her own life some sudden purpose; Miller needed to understand what made this man carry on in the face of such overwhelming devastation. As Miller would eventually learn, Jordan wrote prolifically throughout his life (from children’s stories to class syllabi), and Miller plumbs it all for clues, eventually sketching out the entire life of the man and finding ways to make it chime and contrast with her own (in the footnotes of some academic work, Miller even discovers Jordan referencing the one Darwin quote that her own father had framed on his office wall. Significant!) Unflattering information is eventually revealed about Jordan and Miller gloats that it is a fitting karmic retribution (not that she believes in such things) that he spent his life categorising fish, and as a category, they no longer officially exist.

If fish don’t exist, what else do we have wrong? Slow dawning for me, a scientist’s daughter, but when I give up the fish, I realize that science itself is flawed. Not the beacon toward truth I had always thought it was, but a blunt tool that can wreak a lot of havoc along the way.

In the end, I think that Lulu Miller wanted to talk about herself more than she wanted to talk about David Starr Jordan, and that’s not entirely terrible: her story, her work, her family, it’s all interesting. And the information that she divulges about Jordan’s life and work was also interesting, and new, to me (I did not go into this anticipating the negative revelations so I didn’t bristle at Miller’s setup of him as a respected scientist and academic). I was also fascinated to learn that fish don’t exist; how have I not heard that before? A thoroughly enjoyable read in the moment, with a few nagging quibbles after the fact.
...more

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Aug 07, 2020 Ari Levine rated it it was ok

Shelves: dnf

Gave up halfway. This might have worked as an hourlong episode of Radiolab, packed with forced scientific wonder and self-indulgent millennial quirkiness, but falls utterly flat on the printed page. Desperately needed surgical editing. Especially for sentence fragments.

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Jun 23, 2020 Joy rated it did not like it

Words cannot express how much I hated this book. The author seems tone deaf to every marginalized community that exists, and it's infuriating. Her personal story line made me empathetic at first, and then it just pissed me off. I've never thrown a book out as soon as I finished it, but here we are. That being said, if you're white and able-bodied, you might enjoy it. My one star is for my new knowledge of "fish" not existing. I did like that part. ...more

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May 20, 2022 Bogi Zweiundvierzich rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy, humor

A story of loss, love and the hidden order of life - that's what I've been promised. And the prologue digs right into the theme of loss by bringing upon us the second law of thermodynamics. You probably know it - and if you don't, you better get to know to it: Lulu Miller is a science journalist, and she does get nerdy in her writing. But not too nerdy, and she keeps a light touch with a sense of humour.

Parasites, meanwhile, were clear lowlifes, the lot of them. Just look at how they earned thei

...more

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Aug 20, 2022 Barbara K rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-and-medicine, owned, natural-history, bio-memoir

No struggles to find the right rating for this book - it easily earns 5 stars.

At a low point in her life, struggling with the consequences of an impulsive action that she feels has ruined all chances for happiness in her future, LuLu Miller searches for that silver bullet, that idea or philosophy or approach to life that will allow her to carry on. She thinks she may have found it in the life of David Starr Jordan, an ichthyologist who carried on without missing a beat after losing a collection No struggles to find the right rating for this book - it easily earns 5 stars.

At a low point in her life, struggling with the consequences of an impulsive action that she feels has ruined all chances for happiness in her future, LuLu Miller searches for that silver bullet, that idea or philosophy or approach to life that will allow her to carry on. She thinks she may have found it in the life of David Starr Jordan, an ichthyologist who carried on without missing a beat after losing a collection of hundreds of specimens in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. What was his secret? What form of inner strength kept him from giving in to despair?

The path Miller takes as she searches for this answer unfolds in three ways. First, a re-evaluation of her own life, of the validity of beliefs she has held close, some since childhood, others about more recent events. Second, a probe into the life and achievements of Jordan, attempting to tease out a relationship between his drive and accomplishments, and his own belief system. And third, an exploration of the scientific view and public opinion regarding issues ranging from the mental health benefits of maintaining an overly inflated opinion of oneself, to the political and social history of eugenics, with an ongoing commentary about scientific taxonomy.

She braids these themes together using a natural, easy flow, without signaling in advance her conclusions. Key elements of Jordan's life and work are revealed slowly, chronologically, gradually building to the inescapable truth that he holds no answers for her. But she finds answers elsewhere along her journey through his life.

Miller is a science reporter for NPR; she is adept at presenting scientific concepts succinctly. The book just works really well. My thanks to Jenna for the positive review that led me to this little gem.

p.s. In the book Miller makes a strong argument that Stanford University should no longer venerate Jordan (its first president), given his questionable actions and the abhorrent opinions he promoted later in his life. Less than six months after the book was published the Stanford News webpage posted this headline "Stanford will rename campus spaces named for David Starr Jordan and relocate statue depicting Louis Agassiz". :-) ...more

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Jan 07, 2021 Kerry rated it it was amazing

Shelves: best-2021, favorite, science-fiction, nature, audio-and-print, addiction, history, science, non-fiction

5 stars, I'd give it 10 stars. A book even as I finish it I know I will never forget. One I just want to inhale and have much of what I read become part of my own DNA. Had to buy the book so I can look back at it at my leisure whenever I feel my own self taking the natural world around me for granted. This is a book about a woman looking for live's meaning. A scientist in the early 20th century looking to name and order the natural world, a world renown university, its beginnings and its unsolve ...more

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Apr 23, 2020 Nerdette Podcast rated it it was amazing

I can't say enough good things about this book. It's the perfect invitation to find beauty and solace in uncertainty and chaos. READ IT! ...more

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May 28, 2021 Steve rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

Wow.

What an exquisite jewel of a book.... a pleasant surprise... an unexpected, circuitous journey... a captivating (and shockingly informative) biography of an extraordinary historical character... a science lesson, ... and a touching, raw, and ultimately uplifting and inspirational memoir-of-sorts.... So much crammed into such a slender volume... And so nicely constructed ... and beautifully written... And did I mention the prose!?!?!?

I can't recommend it enough.

Reader's nit: as is my habit an ...more

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Aug 05, 2021 Jill S rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography-memoir, non-fiction, favourites

This is the best book I've read in 2021 ...more

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May 11, 2021 Ross Blocher rated it really liked it

This is one of those rare books I was able to start reading without any idea of what it was or what was coming, and it was interesting to see it unfurl in unexpected ways. So... if you're really into science-adjacent memoirs, human stories and contemplating the complexities of heroes and definitions, you can stop here and put this on your TBR (to be read) pile.

Okay, here's the more **spoilery** take. Author Lulu Miller had heard the intriguing story of David Starr Jordan, or at least, the part o This is one of those rare books I was able to start reading without any idea of what it was or what was coming, and it was interesting to see it unfurl in unexpected ways. So... if you're really into science-adjacent memoirs, human stories and contemplating the complexities of heroes and definitions, you can stop here and put this on your TBR (to be read) pile.

Okay, here's the more **spoilery** take. Author Lulu Miller had heard the intriguing story of David Starr Jordan, or at least, the part of his story in which his intricate collection of preserved fish specimens, many of them holotypes (the specimens upon which the species is defined) were destroyed. Not just once, but three times, including in a lightning-caused fire and in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Each time, Jordan was driven to preserve what he could, devise new taxonomic methods that would survive the previous disaster (stitching labels directly onto a fish, for example), and go back to collecting new fish. His persistence led to the classification of roughly 20% of fish species known at the time.

Miller was interested in the drive of this scientist, hoping that by learning more about Jordan she might find similar purposefulness in her own life. What she got instead was an increasingly complicated picture of a flawed man, so the story instead becomes a somewhat out-of-sequence retelling of Jordan's life in parallel with Miller's own as she discovers facts about him. I understand the need for the format given the conclusion, but there are swaths in which we spend a lot of time in her head, or limited information is expanded to its breaking point. You might ask yourself, "Wait, why are we spending so much time learning about Jordan's boyhood schooling experience on this island?"

Now to the **real spoilers**, which you might prefer the book reveal to you. Jordan was trained by a prominent Creationist (Louis Agassiz) but eventually came to accept the truth of evolution. What he did not overcome was his deep-seated racism, and he conducted his scientific classifications with an ingrained sense of "higher" and "lower" forms. This extended to his classifications of humans, and he was one of the most prominent eugenicists of his time (I checked, and sure enough, he's mentioned a couple times in the related book Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck . If that were not enough, there's good reason to suspect Jordan may have been behind the poisoning death of Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University, and for the pettiest of reasons imaginable. At the very least, he obstructed the investigation of her death and added a lot of public confusion to the conversation around it.

David Starr Jordan doesn't come out of this looking so hot, and Miller is left struggling with how to take his lesson of persistence without taking other lessons from the life of a guy whose flaws extended beyond being a mere product of his time. This is where the title of the book is stitched onto the narrative (as one might stitch a name card to a fish): it turns out that the label "fish" doesn't map well onto any meaningful taxonomic category. The multitude of species lumped in under the term "fish" lack coherence, such that some "fish" like lungfish are cladistically more closely related to humans (and birds, and reptiles) than they are to other fish. Miller's take is that this is something of a posthumous blow to Jordan, obliterating his categorization efforts once again as science proves more nuanced than his simple views of biology allowed. It's a valid scientific point, but also kind of a nerdy deep cut, and I suspect many readers may come away having a hard time explaining why it is fish don't exist and what we're supposed to call them instead (there are a few options presented, but Miller doesn't leave us with a clear favorite or a directive for normalizing a new standard). As with David Starr Jordan himself, we walk away saying, "Well, it's complicated." And perhaps that's the lesson.

As my wife and I were walking our neighborhood in Burbank one night, she pointed out to me that we were walking past David Starr Jordan Middle School. I went to take a picture of the sign, and noticed that the LED panel below proclaimed that a name change was coming: "Dolores Huerta Middle School!!!". The school had been renamed, and we had to wonder if the revelations of this book played a role. I'd imagine so. When we walked by a month later, the sign had been replaced altogether, and David Starr Jordan, like fish, no longer existed. ...more

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May 28, 2020 Erin (roostercalls) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020-reads

“[I]t is our life’s work to mistrust our measures. Especially those about moral and mental standing. To remember that behind every ruler there is a ruler. To remember that a category is at best a proxy; at worst, a shackle.”
•
Right at the corner of depth and whimsy sits Lulu Miller. Fans of NPR's Invisibilia will delight in this long-form nonfiction by that podcast’s co-creator, and those unfamiliar with her work have a treat coming when they discover her inimitable storytelling capability.
•
Mille “[I]t is our life’s work to mistrust our measures. Especially those about moral and mental standing. To remember that behind every ruler there is a ruler. To remember that a category is at best a proxy; at worst, a shackle.”
•
Right at the corner of depth and whimsy sits Lulu Miller. Fans of NPR's Invisibilia will delight in this long-form nonfiction by that podcast’s co-creator, and those unfamiliar with her work have a treat coming when they discover her inimitable storytelling capability.
•
Miller reaches her arms wide to tell the story of a scientist working more than a century ago and his quest to order the natural world, then brings the reader to small, intimate spaces as she relates his tale to her own rocky journey. She skates from tragic personal disclosures to flop house bathroom jokes; from the semantics of taxonomy to the ravages of a combusted relationship. There might be some possible murder thrown in, because the history of science is crazier than you thought. Keen humor and a facility with language keep the reader tethered through the dissolution of boundaries of both genre and the schema with which we understand the world.
•
I cannot recommend this gem of a book enough to anyone who loves history or science (or stories about history or science), meditations on the unruly hand of chaos in our lives, or the tantalizing and thorny allure of categorization as a slipstream to meaning. And even if that all sounds like nonsense to you, know that I would still confidently place it before you, because every reader deserves to spend 200+ pages in the hands of a generous writer who’s in love with words and in perpetual awe of the world.
•
“Is this weed a weed? Is this fish a fish? This, in a way, was one of Darwin’s lessons. To look at nature with humility, to consider the vast array of all you do not know, waiting just behind your assumptions.”
•
I’d be remiss not to mention this book’s illustrations by @katesamworth —stunning & worth the cost of the book themselves. Thanks to @simonbooks for the dARC & HUGE ty to @runoutofpages for loaning her galleys of this book I was so psyched to pick up while I awaited @netgalley approval! Available now. ...more

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About Lulu Miller

Lulu Miller

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Louisa Elizabeth Miller, better known as Lulu Miller, is an American writer, artist, and science reporter for National Public Radio. Miller's career in radio started as a producer for the WNYC program Radiolab. She now co-hosts the NPR show Invisibilia with Alix Spiegel. ...more

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Los peces no existen (Crecimiento personal)

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“When I give up the fish, I get, at long last, that thing I had been searching for: a mantra, a trick, a prescription for hope. I get the promise that there are good things in store. Not because I deserve them. Not because I worked for them. But because they are as much a part of Chaos as destruction and loss. Life, the flip side of death. Growth, of rot.” — 36 likes

“I have come to believe that it is our life's work to tear down this order, to keep tugging at it, trying to unravel it, to set free the organisms trapped underneath. That it is our life's work work to mistrust our measures. Especially those about moral and mental standing. To remember that behind every ruler there is a Ruler. To remember that a category is at best a proxy; at worst, a shackle.” — 27 likes

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