The Feather Thief : : Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Science & Nature / Animals / Birds	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Science & Nature / Animals / Birds	4-week checkout	Due 04-20-2024

Prologue -- Dead birds and rich men. The trials of Alfred Russel Wallace ; Lord Rothschild's museum ; The feather fever ; Birth of a movement ; The Victorian Brotherhood of Fly-tiers ; The future of fly-tying -- The Tring heist. Featherless in London ; Plan for Museum Invasion.Doc ; The case of the broken window ; "A very unusual crime" ; Hot birds on a cold trail ; Fluteplayer 1988 ; Behind bars ; Rot in hell ; The diagnosis ; The Asperger's defense ; The missing skins -- Truth and consequences. The 21st International Fly Tying Symposium ; The lost memory of the ocean ; Chasing leads in a time machine ; Dr. Prum's thumb drive ; "I'm not a thief" ; Three days in Norway ; Michelangelo vanishes ; Flowers in the bloodstream.
"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.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Nice Book. submitted by MadMonkeyZ on June 23, 2018, 2:54pm Clever, informative, and sometimes endearingly bumbling, this mix of natural history and crime opens up new worlds. Readers will never look at an old stuffed bird or an elaborately tied fishing fly the same way again.

Starts slow, ends fascinating submitted by pk on August 16, 2018, 1:47pm This book was slow to grab my attention as it seemed a bit disjointed and there were far too many descriptions of birds and feathers for my taste. But it sure picked up steam and led me to a world I never knew. Who knew that tying flies for salmon fishing could lead to this sort of crime?

Good read submitted by teri on July 10, 2019, 11:08pm The beginning may seem slow - as it goes back to 18th century naturalist Alfred Wallace, and his collecting of bird specimens. I found this part to be quite interesting, and If you're interested in ornithology or natural history, it's enjoyable reading, The information is also necessary in order for readers to understand the seriousness of the modern crime that was committed. All in all a fascinating story!

Too slow and dry for me to get past the first 25 pgs or so submitted by bookher on July 29, 2019, 2:10pm I may go back to this book at some point since other review have said how slow it starts but then gets really good. At the time I attempted to read this book, I just didn't have patience to plow through waiting for it to get good. I was interested in the subject matter so will probably attempt this again.

So interesting submitted by Princess Cimorene on August 8, 2020, 12:48pm The first part of this book was my favorite. Victorian habits, obsessions, and society in general was so weird it sounds like fiction at times. I'm not a big nonfiction reader, so this really pulled me into the book, and the almost conversational writing style throughout the rest of the story was nice.