“The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century” (Penguin, 2019 reprint, paperback, 336 pages, $14.39) by Kirk Wallace Johnson is a true crime story full of quirky people and unbelievable events. It is pretty much common knowledge that a tragic loss of birdlife occurred because of the millinery trade during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when millions of birds were killed to adorn ladies’ hats. But the pages of “The Feather Thief” reveal another threat to birdlife—the Victorian art of salmon-fishing fly tiers. This hobby, that has morphed into an obsession for some people, requires the use of feathers from endangered, and in some cases, extinct, bird species to make specific types of lures. Desperate fly tiers will spend thousands of dollars and look the other way as to whether the feathers were obtained legally. For extinct and endangered exotic birds, museums are often the only way to get the coveted feathers needed to meet the requirements for Victorian-era salmon flies.
In 2009, Edwin Rist, a young music student and talented flautist, took his passion for fly-tying to another level when he invaded the British Tring National History Museum and walked away with hundreds of bird skins, some collected 150 years earlier. The museum, which holds over one million specimens, noticed the broken window used by Rist to enter the specimen vaults, but failed to conduct a thorough audit of their inventory. Thus, the clues to the breaking-and-entering theft grew cold, even though several hundred bird skins, some of which were incredibly rare species, were taken. Meanwhile, Rist sold some of the thirty-seven King Birds of Paradise and thirty-nine Resplendent Quetzals on-line. He removed the specimen tags before selling them. These labels made the bird skins invaluable to the scientific community and was a huge setback to scientists. Johnson, who heard about Rist’s museum heist from a fly-fishing guide, became obsessed with recovering the missing bird skins and entered the dark world of the illegal feather trade. The result is a book describing an unforgettable tale of loss and injustice.
“The Feather Thief” was an Amazon Best Book of May 2018, a 2019 Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award Nominee (Shortlist), and a 2019 Edgar Awards Nominee – Best Fact Crime (Finalist). It made Oprah’s 20 Best True Crime Books of All Time, Good Housekeeping’s 25 Best True Crime Books of All Time and was a Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinalist, an Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee (Longlist), and a BookPage Best Books of 2018.
Fans of “The Gardner Heist” by Urlich Boser, “Migrations” by Charlotte McConaghy, and “The Orchid Thief” by Susan Orlean will probably enjoy this book. “The Feather Thief” feels like “Ocean’s Eleven” meets the movie “Rio” in literary form. The book is a page turner that will leave readers scratching their heads and wondering “How can this be true?” A fascinating read!
Kirk Wallace Johnson is the author of two other books. In “To Be a Friend is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind”, he describes his efforts on behalf of Iraqi refugees. In “The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast”, Johnson reports on one woman’s battle for environmental justice amidst white supremacists and corporate greed in small-town Texas. Johnson’s work has appeared in “The New Yorker”, the “New York Times”, and on “60 Minutes”. Prior to his work in Iraq, he conducted research on political Islamism in Egypt as a Fulbright Scholar. Johnson graduated from the University of Chicago in 2002. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, son, and daughter. To learn more, visit: www.kirkwjohnson.com.
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