In late 2015, California-based science illustrator Jane Kim finished the final brush stroke of a mural featuring all 243 families of modern birds and their extinct predecessors—a process that took no less than two-and-a-half years. Wanting to maintain both artistry and scientific integrity, she consulted dozens of ornithologists on how to best represent each of the 270 life-size species and map them according to their respective places of origin. Every detail, from shape to color palette, was scrutinized and vetted. Kim’s magnum opus, titled From So Simple a Beginning, lives in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, though you don’t have to travel all the way there to see it. The mural is now available in book form: a 224-page tour of the motley avian crew and its backstory, with essays from Kim, her Inkdwell partner Thayer Walker, and Cornell scientists. Wall of Birds invites readers to not only see the stunning paintings up close, but also to explore the...