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Staff Pick
With vivid, engaging storytelling, Kirk Wallace Johnson recounts a tale that has got to be the strangest crime ever — stealing rare, exotic bird skins from a natural history museum and selling their feathers to enthusiasts of the Victorian art of salmon-fly tying. Thoroughly fascinating. Recommended By Lucinda G., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever." — Christian Science Monitor
"Fascinating from the first page to the last — you won’t be able to put it down." — Southern Living
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.
Review
"This extraordinary book exposes an international underground that traffics in rare and precious natural resources, yet was previously unknown to all but a few. 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
Review
"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
Review
"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
Review
"Thrilling… This book is The Orchid Thief for the fly-fishing and birding set." Paris Review, "Staff Picks"
Review
"[A] true-crime caper recounted with relish." O, The Oprah Magazine, "10 Titles to Pick Up Now"
Review
"One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever…. Johnson is an intrepid journalist…[who] has a fine knack for uncovering details that reveal, captivate, and disturb." Christian Science Monitor
About the Author
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.