The Feather Thief Pdf

ISBN: 110198161X
Title: The Feather Thief Pdf Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

An Amazon Best Book of May 2018: The title of The Feather Thief smartly echoes Susan Orleans' The Orchid Thief, and The Feather Thief has good reason to compare itself to such an admired book. Strange niches of history. Obsessives who refuse to adhere to the law. A writer who stumbles upon a story that becomes an obsession in its own right. All these elements combust to create Johnson's investigation into the theft of 299 rare bird skins from a British natural history museum. While bird skins might sound like (ahem) dry reading, Johnson knows just how to fascinate the reader, plunging with vigor into exotic bird exploration, the crackdown on rare bird trafficking, and the insular world of fly-tying enthusiasts, all of which lead, almost inevitably, to the theft from the Tring Museum. The most likely receivers of the stolen goods? Fly-tiers with an unquenchable thirst for feathers from blue chatterers, the resplendent quetzal, and birds of paradise so they can re-create outlandish Victorian-era salmon flies. Although the thief is caught, Johnson decides to investigate himself what happened to the 106 never-recovered bird skins, pulling the reader even deeper into the thief's bizarre world. Clever, informative, and sometimes endearingly bumbling, this mix of natural history and crime opens up new worlds. You'll never look at a stuffed bird the same way again. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review “Fascinating . . . a complex tale of greed, deception, and ornithological sabotage.” —The New York Times Book Review“Fascinating from the first page to the last—you won’t be able to put it down.” —Southern Living“A fascinating book . . . the kind of intelligent reported account that alerts us to a threat and that, one hopes, will never itself be endangered.” —The Wall Street Journal“Thrilling . . . This book is The Orchid Thief for the fly-fishing and birding set.”—Paris Review, “Staff Picks”“Johnson, like Susan Orlean before him, is a magnifier: he sees grand themes—naïveté, jealousy, depression, the entitlement of man . . . That vision makes a book about things like Victorian salmon fly tiers feel heavy as gold.” —The New Yorker, “What We’re Reading This Summer”“[A] true-crime caper recounted with relish.” —O, The Oprah Magazine, “10 Titles to Pick Up Now”“Vivid and arresting . . . Johnson [is] a wonderfully assured writer.” —The Times (London)“One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever. . . . Johnson is an intrepid journalist . . . [with] a fine knack for uncovering details that reveal, captivate, and disturb.”—Christian Science Monitor“An uncommon book . . . [that] informs and enlightens. . . A heist story that manages to underline the enduring and continuing importance of natural history collections and their incredible value to science. We need more books like this one.” —Science“The best compliment I can give a nonfiction writer is that they make me care deeply about an obscure topic I would otherwise never have been interested in. That’s the case with Kirk Wallace Johnson’s The Feather Thief.” —Eva Holland, Outside, “The Best Summer Books”“A fascinating account of a bizarre crime . . . The Feather Thief is one of the more peculiar and gripping crime stories in recent memory.” —LitHub CrimeReads, “The Essential True Crime Books of Spring 2018” “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

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.

Captivating true crime story Well written book, history part in the beginning is methodical and at times a bit dry but the story of the fly tiers and their obsession with exotic feathers is capivating, the author makes this into page turning true crime tale.If you like odd stories of the strange things around us, you will enjoy this book.As you read the book, you will want to see photos of these beautiful birds to better understand the obsession, he has photos at the end or just Google them.Captivating narrative and obscure facts seamlessly woven into an unlikely but true story that you won't be able to put down! I read this book over one weekend as I could hardly bear to put it down. The true crime story of Edwin Rist and his ill-conceived but actually successful heist is a story that is too unlikely to be fiction. In the midst of telling his story, Johnson needs to share extensive obscure background information with readers and does so in a way that continues to drive the fascinating narrative forward. A hard to classify genre, it reminded me in turns of the best of well-researched literary nonfiction (think Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot) mixed with a little self-deprecating narrator-turned-character in the vein of A.J. Jacobs, along with a too-crazy-to-be-true caper that even channels the Oceans 11 franchise. This is a unique and compelling book that should not be missed!True crime book that reads like a mystery novel This is a startling true story about the lengths a man will go to satisfy an obsession. The reader is introduced to the world of fly-tieing, the art of creating intricate fishing lures from bird feathers. What is remarkable about this activity is there is a subset of these tiers who collect extremely rare and valuable bird feathers and pay exorbitant prices for the most exotic ones. The subject of this book is such an individual. Edwin Rist is an accomplished student musician and avid fly-tier who steals hundreds of rare birds from the British Museum in 2009.The book is a study in obsession as the author himself, an Iraqi war veteran, becomes fixated on the crime and the man who committed it. The story is immersive. Johnson, the author, has spent an incalculable amount of time researching the history of fly-tieing and the lure of exotic feathers to the point of even surreptitiously attending a fly-tiers convention undercover. He becomes a principal investigator in solving the details of Edwin's crime, identifying accomplices and tracking bird skins.The book grabbed my interest from the first few pages. Johnson's book has all the pacing of a well-crafted mystery novel and manages to hold the suspense of exactly what happened and who was involved throughout the entire book. He covers this story with all the zeal of a professional investigative journalist. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes psychological character studies and true crime.

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