A review by nawakhtha
Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

informative inspiring medium-paced

3.75

A book about David Starr Jordan where the author researched him to find out his source of perseverance in the face of chaos. It starts off rather annoyingly as it was mainly discussing Jordan in a positive light and might seem to ignore the deeply concerning and hypocritical aspects of his legacy, but this all gets addressed in the second half of the book. The first half of the book also has the author taking a tone of scientific and atheistic snobbery at times (not really excessive, just to the point where I personally found it mildly annoying), but it mellows out as the book progresses which ends up painting a nice picture of how the journey of researching Jordan’s life has transformed the author. I expected to dislike this book quite a bit, but my feelings on that shifted the more I got into it which I think adds a lot to how I was able to feel the author’s transformation through her journey. It was also rather gripping and written smoothly enough that I was still able to enjoy it throughout. 
The illustrations in the beginning of every chapter are beautiful.
It does contain references to self harm, eugenics, and forced sterilization. I personally thought those topics were handled well by the author, but it’s worth mentioning in-case you just generally don’t want to engage with these topics at this point in your life. 
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