The Feather Thief

Posted on by

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. Free Download [ The Feather Thief ] author [ Kirk W. Johnson ] – kino-fada.fr An online forum recently posted a list of true crime without murder or violence The Feather Thief Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century would fit the bill as no murder nor physical harm befalls any person Yet is any crime without a victim Each reader would come up with a different list of who or what was affected by the events that are related in this book Perhaps not as disturbing as the loss of life or a brutal rape or abuse, but still a story of devastating loss An online forum recently posted a list of true crime without murder or violence The Feather Thief Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century would fit the bill as no murder nor physical harm befalls any person Yet is any crime without a victim Each reader would come up with a different list of who or what was affected by the events that are related in this book Perhaps not as disturbing as the loss of life or a brutal rape or abuse, but still a story of devastating loss I could not summarize what this book is about better than this quote from author, Kirk Wallace JohnsonInitially, the story of the Tring heist filled with quirky and obsessive individuals, strange birds, curio filled museums, archaic fly recipes, Victorian hats, plume smugglers, ... The Feather Thief is a delightful read that successfully combines many genres biography, true crime, ornithology, history, travel and memoir to tell the story of an audacious heist of rare bird skins from the Natural History Museum at Tring in 2009 Somehow I managed not to hear about it at the time, but it was huge news in terms of museum collections and endangered species cr...Deciding to read The Feather Thief should really come down to how much you want to know about birds Birds are animals I m perfectly willing to appreciate at a distance but, barring a series of childhood budgies, they ve never been my particular thing All the same, I ve got mad respect for Darwin, Wallace, and their culture rupturing scientific discovery made possible by tropical birds, so I thought this book would be up my alley.The bad thing about this audiobook is ...This is the truly amazing story of how a twenty year old American flute prodigy pulled off an unbelievable museum heist of rare and exotic bird skins and feathers Edwin Risk loved music but also was quite enthralled in the world of fly fish tying He spent hours perfecting his craft and while still a young teenager, became a master tier within the competitive and elusive world In 2009 while studying at London s Royal Academy of Music, Edwin began to put forth a plan to steal rare bird specimen This is the truly amazing story of how a twenty year old American flute prodigy pulled off an unbelievable museum heist of rare and exotic bird skins and feathers E...Reminds me of The Orchid Thief in its readability and theme.FANTASTIC Nonviolent True CrimeI had wanted to read this one for the nonviolent true crime roundupI d done but hadn t been able to get a copy until now Now if you re thinking But really how interesting can bird specimen theft be let me just tell you this book was super interesting from beginning to end, and read like a thriller that I couldn t put down Just 10% into the book I felt as if I d read 10 books worth of information and adventure You start with a museum heist by a 20 year old flu FANTASTIC Nonviolent True CrimeI had wanted to read this one for the nonviolent true crime roundupI d done but hadn t been able to get a copy until now Now if you re thinking But really how interesting can bird specimen theft be let me just tell you this book was super interesting from beginning to end, and read like a thriller that I couldn t put down Just 10% into the book I felt as if I d read 10 books worth of information and adventure You start with a museum heist by a 20 year old flutist, and then go on historical expeditions with everything from thieving an...I was absolutely captivated by this book Who knew there was this obsessive group who made salmon fishing ties using the feathers of endangered birds Amazingly, they often don t even fish with them and the salmon the...I flew through the first two sections Johnson provides a history and tells the heist story in a way that makes feathers fascinating The last section, though, which tells his story of his obsession, was less interesting t...I read this nonstop, completely drawn into this bizarre true crime Who knew a crime about a man stealing a historical collection and thousands of dollars worth of dead birds from a museum so he could use the feathers to make salmon fly catchers could be so fascinatingThis is such a weird but fantastic book I can t tell you how many times I thought, i mean, we re talking about feathers, right Feathers Aren t there bigger issues going on in the world right now But it sucks you in somehow you ...

The Feather Thief
  • English
  • 19 January 2017
  • Kindle Edition
  • 320 pages
  • Kirk W. Johnson
  • The Feather Thief