Insects are at once our most familiar fellow animals and the most mysterious. They appear to be indestructible, but globally, insect species are quietly disappearing in the sixth mass extinction that life on Earth is undergoing today. This joint project of photographer Levon Biss and the American Museum of Natural History contains indelible images of 40 extinct or endangered species in the museum's collection, selected from its vast holdings by a team of scientists. They range from imperiled old friends like the monarch butterfly, to the remote Lord Howe Island stick insect of Australia, thought to be extinct for most of the 20th century until a tiny population was discovered and bred in captivity in 2001. All were sent to Biss's studio, where he created commanding portraits that can be enlarged 30 times lifesize to reveal vivid full-page details of form and color-a world invisible to our naked eyes.