The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
- ISBN-10
- 1101981636
- ISBN-13
- 9781101981634
- Category
- Nature
- Pages
- 336
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-04-23
- Publisher
- Penguin
- Author
- Kirk Wallace Johnson
Description
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 Woods, The 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.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2018-04-24
- 336 pages
- Ebook
- Penguin
-
- 2018-04-24
- 300 pages
- Paperback
- Viking
Similar books
-
The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird
By Joshua HammerSo begins a “vivid tale of obsession and international derring-do” (Publishers Weekly), following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race ...
-
The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast
By Kirk Wallace JohnsonThis explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays—and who now represents the ...
-
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
By Michael FinkelThis is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.
-
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
By Susan OrleanIn this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,” Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film ...
-
The Book Thief
By Markus ZusakIn superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time. “The kind of book that can be life-changing.” —The New ...
-
A Feather on the Breath of God: A Novel
By Sigrid NunezFrom Sigrid Nunez, the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend, comes A Feather on the Breath of God: a mesmerizing story about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love A young ...
-
The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps
By Michael BlandingThe story of an infamous crime, a revered map dealer with an unsavory secret, and the ruthless subculture that consumed him Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers—both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to ...
-
Etta Lemon: The Woman who Saved the Birds
By Tessa Boase148 'Clothes are the first thing that catch ladies' – Alice Milne's diary, 22 October 1906. Quoted in Melanie Phillips, The Ascent of the eye' – quoted in Anne de Courcy, Margot Woman (Little, Brown, 2003). at War: Love and Betrayal in ...
-
Pigeon
A pigeon private eye captures a birdnapper with help from his feathered friends.
-
Books of a Feather
By Kate CarlisleIn this novel in the New York Times bestselling Bibliophile Mystery series, San Francisco book-restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright’s latest project is for the birds, but it may have her running for her life.