The Feather Thief

Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfiction

by Kirk W. Johnson

No cover — Kirk W. Johnson: The Feather Thief (2018)

483 pages

English language

Published Jan. 18, 2018

OCLC Number:: 1041709357

View on OpenLibrary

(13 reviews)

"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."--Page [2] of cover.

6 editions

KnitAFett reviewed The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Interesting, but meh at the same time.

3 stars

I appreciated the history of why birds were hunted to the point of extinction for their feathers and how the laws that are in place to protect them now were put into action. I also now know a lot more than I thought I would ever need to know about fly-tying. The overall drive to have the genuine feathers as a status symbol in the community was insane. I wanted to shake a whole bunch of people in this book.

I felt like the "true crime" aspect of this book really dragged it down a bit, though. There was never some major "aha!" moments or anything and was just a weird obsession for the author (who was into fly fishing) wanting to understand why a major fly-tier stole a bunch of birds from the museum and then taking it upon himself to try to find the missing birds after …

I'm not mad that I put time into it, but it isn't something I would ever have interest in reading again, and definitely not one that I would feel a need to recommend to others. I do, however, want to learn more about the history of bird feathers in fashion.

Avarla reviewed The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Review of 'The Feather Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Highly recommended!
This combination of true crime, memoir, and natural science history. Beautifully told and un-put-downable. I rushed through the audio book in only two sittings, not being able to pause the story.

I'm still low-key angry at Edwin, the loss for the scientific community, and the arrogance of the fly-tieing community.