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Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
by Kirk Wallace Johnson
A rollicking true-crime adventure and a thought-provoking exploration of the human drive to possess natural beauty 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.
"Starred Review. [An] enthralling account of a truly bizarre crime… Johnson goes deep into the exotic bird and feather trade and concludes that though obsession and greed know no bounds, they certainly make for a fascinating tale. The result is a page-turner that will likely appeal to science, history, and true crime readers." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A superb tale about obsession, nature, and man's 'unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty, whatever the cost.'" - Kirkus
"A different kind of detective tale that will appeal to lovers of natural history and criminal caper stories." - Library Journal
"[A] thrilling read." - Bustle
"Fascinating from the first page to the last - you won't be able to put it down." - Southern Living
"You'll never look at a feather the same way again after reading this riveting detective story...[The Feather Thief] brilliantly weaves together Alfred Russel Wallace, the surprisingly shadowy history of fly fishing, conservation and the plumage of the most beautiful birds on earth." - The Bookseller (UK)
"This is the type of book I absolutely love – one that takes a seemingly obscure topic and shines a brilliant and bizarre and endlessly fascinating light upon it. The crime itself is riveting, but Kirk Wallace Johnson's portrayal of the crazy world of feather fanatics makes this an unforgettable read." - Michael Finkel, author of The Stranger in the Woods
"A true-crime tale that weaves seemingly unrelated threads - a museum break-in; the development of evolutionary theory; a case of post-Iraq PTSD; endangered birds; and (above all) the murky underworld of fly-tying obsessives - into a spellbinding narrative tapestry." - Mark Adams, author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu
"A captivating tale of an unlikely thief and his even more unlikely crime, and a meditation on obsession, greed, and the sheer fascination in something as seemingly simple as a feather." - Paul Collins, author of The Murder of the Century
"A stirring examination of the devastating effects of human greed on endangered birds, a powerful argument for protecting our environment - and, above all, a captivating crime story." - Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees
"This gem of a book, about a heist of archival birds, is marvelous, moving, and transcendent. I can't stop thinking about it." - Dean King, author of Skeletons on the Zahara and The Feud
"A page-turning read you won't soon forget, The Feather Thief tells us as much about our cultural priorities as it does about the crimes themselves. There's never been anything like it." - Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs
This information about The Feather Thief was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kirk W. Johnson is the author of To Be a Friend Is Fatal and the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. He is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the American Academy in Berlin, and the USC Annenberg Center.
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