In a future when deforestation and other environmental factors have caused many bird species to go extinct, businessman Alfred Wallis offers a catalog of parts for creating replacements, from hand-carved beaks to Italian-leather feet.

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. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake-which sent more than a thousand...