Author Guide · Science Memoir
Books Written by
In April 1906 the San Francisco earthquake smashed the jars of David Starr Jordan’s fish collection at Stanford, and Jordan, the university’s founding president, started again, attaching the salvaged name tags directly to the specimens. Lulu Miller, a radio producer who had helped build Radiolab and co-founded NPR’s Invisibilia, went looking for what kept him going. She found a taxonomist who also championed eugenics, and a scientific twist that undid the very category he spent his life on. Why Fish Don’t Exist (2020) was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction in 2025. This guide covers her two key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 key books · 2020–2024 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Lulu Miller has published two books: Why Fish Don’t Exist (2020), a memoir woven around the fish taxonomist David Starr Jordan, and Trucky Roads (2024), a picture book for young children. Start with Why Fish Don’t Exist; it is her only book for adults, and the turn it takes halfway through is best met without spoilers.
Where to Start with Lulu Miller
If you want her defining book
→ Why Fish Don’t Exist (2020) — a biography, a memoir and a science story in one.
If you want narrative science with a twist
→ Why Fish Don’t Exist (2020) — how a whole category of animals stopped holding up.
If you want something to read aloud to a small child
→ Trucky Roads (2024) — rhyming text and unusual trucks.
2 Lulu Miller Books, in Order
Why Fish Don’t Exist
Miller braids the life of David Starr Jordan, the 19th-century fish taxonomist and first president of Stanford, with her own: her depression, and her relationship with her father, the scientist Chris Miller, who taught her that chaos comes for everyone. Admiration for Jordan’s persistence after the 1906 earthquake gives way to his support for eugenics and his alleged part in covering up how Jane Stanford died, and to the finding that “fish” is not a valid group in modern classification. Published by Simon & Schuster with scratchboard illustrations by Kate Samworth, it was a finalist for the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, and after its UK publication by Pushkin in 2024 was longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
Trucky Roads
A picture book illustrated by Hui Skipp and published in June 2024 by Paula Wiseman Books at Simon & Schuster. Trucky, a bearded driver in a pink hat, shows young readers a run of unlikely trucks, from earth trucks and water trucks to “toe trucks”, in lightly rhyming text. Kirkus called it “a gloriously bright, inventive world on wheels” and named it one of its best picture books.
In What Order to Read Lulu Miller
The two books have nothing to do with each other: one is a memoir for adults, the other a picture book for toddlers. If you are here for her writing, Why Fish Don’t Exist is the book.
For more in the same voice, her radio work is the obvious next step: the archive of Invisibilia (2015–2023), Radiolab, which she has co-hosted since 2022, and Terrestrials, her nature podcast for children. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in VQR, including the story “The Obituary” (2018).
A reading path
1. Why Fish Don’t Exist (2020)
2. Invisibilia and Radiolab episodes
3. Trucky Roads (2024), for the children in your life
The years · 2005–2025
Quick facts about Lulu Miller
- Known for
- Turning the life of a forgotten fish taxonomist into a memoir about chaos, order and how to keep going, and co-founding NPR’s Invisibilia before becoming a co-host of Radiolab
- 2005
- Graduates from Swarthmore College in history
- 2010
- Radiolab wins a Peabody; she is a producer
- 2015
- Co-founds Invisibilia with Alix Spiegel
- 2025
- Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction longlist
- Grew up
- Newton, Massachusetts, the daughter of two professors
- Education
- Swarthmore College (history, 2005); MFA, University of Virginia (2013)
- Radio
- First hired producer at Radiolab; shared its 2010 Peabody Award
- Invisibilia
- Co-founded with Alix Spiegel for NPR in January 2015; the last episode aired in April 2023
- Now
- Co-host of Radiolab with Latif Nasser since 2022; creator and host of the children’s podcast Terrestrials
- Lives
- The Chicago area, with her wife, Grace, and their children
The red mark is 2020: Why Fish Don’t Exist, her first book.
How Lulu Miller Writes: Radio Storytelling on the Page
Why Fish Don’t Exist is built like a long radio story. It runs two lines side by side, Jordan’s life and Miller’s own, and cuts between them out of chronological order, so each one comments on the other. Jordan’s refusal to give up after the 1906 earthquake is first presented as a lesson for someone whose own life is falling apart.
Then the book turns. Her reporting on Jordan’s eugenics campaigning and on the 1905 death of Jane Stanford complicates the hero she set up, and a further turn comes from biology itself: classified by descent, the animals we call fish do not form a single group. Miller ties the two together. A man so sure of nature’s ranks was also sure about which people ranked higher. The book is illustrated with scratchboard drawings by Kate Samworth.
She writes in the first person and turns the irony on herself as often as on Jordan; Christoph Irmscher noted that self-irony in The Wall Street Journal. The question underneath is the one she put to NPR in 2020: that the desire to see a story or see order “can really be dangerous”. For writers who mix reporting and personality in the same way, see the guides to Mary Roach and Ed Yong.
Frequently asked questions about Lulu Miller’s books
How many books has Lulu Miller written?
Two: Why Fish Don’t Exist (2020), her memoir for adults, and Trucky Roads (2024), a picture book illustrated by Hui Skipp.
What are Lulu Miller’s books in order?
Why Fish Don’t Exist (2020), then Trucky Roads (2024).
Where should I start with Lulu Miller?
With Why Fish Don’t Exist. It is her only book for adults; Trucky Roads is for small children.
What is Lulu Miller’s most famous book?
Why Fish Don’t Exist (2020). It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, was chosen for Stanford’s Three Books programme in 2022, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction in 2025.
What is Why Fish Don’t Exist about?
It is a memoir woven around David Starr Jordan (1851–1931), the fish taxonomist who became Stanford’s first president. Miller follows his persistence after the 1906 earthquake, then his support for eugenics and his alleged part in covering up how Jane Stanford died, alongside her own depression and her search for a way to live with chaos.
Do fish really not exist?
Not as a scientific group. Biologists who classify animals by shared descent (cladistics) find that a lungfish is more closely related to a cow than to a salmon, so “fish” does not form one branch of the tree of life. The animals exist; the category does not hold together.
Is Why Fish Don’t Exist a true story?
Yes. It is nonfiction: a biography of David Starr Jordan combined with Miller’s memoir. It is shelved as memoir, and parts of Jordan’s story, such as his conduct after Jane Stanford’s death in 1905, rest on later historical research that Miller reports.
Is Lulu Miller on Radiolab?
Yes. She was the show’s first hired producer, left to write, and became a co-host with Latif Nasser in 2022 after Jad Abumrad retired. Between those, she co-founded NPR’s Invisibilia with Alix Spiegel in 2015.
Has Lulu Miller written a children’s book?
Yes, Trucky Roads (2024), illustrated by Hui Skipp and published by Paula Wiseman Books at Simon & Schuster. She also created and hosts Terrestrials, a nature podcast for children.
Footnotes
- Lulu Miller — Wikipedia
- Why Fish Don’t Exist — Wikipedia
- Why Fish Don’t Exist — Kirkus Reviews
- Trucky Roads — Kirkus Reviews
- The 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction longlist — Women’s Prize
- Lulu Miller interviewed by Ari Shapiro — NPR, 2020
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Once we name a thing, we run the risk of stopping to see it.”
— Lulu Miller, interview with Ari Shapiro, NPR (2020)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations