The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

Author:
Series: Summer Adventures
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Year: 2019
ASIN: 1101981636
ISBN: 1101981636

If you love too-weird-to-be-true stories or stumbling upon a new-to-you topic you had no idea could be so fascinating, this is the book for you. Author Kirk Wallace Johnson was fly-fishing in New Mexico when he first heard the strange story of Edward Rist, the thief who stole hundreds of bird skins from the British Museum of Natural History: he brazenly walked into the museum with a suitcase and walked out with a collection of valuable and exotic specimens. Though the police knew Rist was selling his stolen treasure online, many of the precious specimens went missing—and Johnson was determined to discover where they went. Motivated by natural curiosity, a regard for science, and a sense of justice, he became an amateur detective-of-sorts and shares his experiences in this engaging narrative.

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About the Book

As heard on NPR’s This American Life

“Absorbing . . . Though it’s non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor

A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the WoodsThe Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief.

On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London’s Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin’s obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin’s, Alfred Russel Wallace, who’d risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness.

Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man’s relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man’s destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.

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