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

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As well as recounting a crime this text provokes its readers to think about human obsession and greed about the fate of avian species which, by an accident of plumage, have vanished from the earth. I warmly recommend this unusual, rich book. Trout & Salmon Magazine

Beautiful, Big, Bold Dinosaur Books: of Molina-Pérez and Larramendi’s Theropods, Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2, and Parker et al.’s Saurian There is a theft involved, of course, but Kirk Wallace Johnson does a fine job - enough to make me wince repeatedly - of bringing into focus the massacre of millions of birds simply because they're pretty. In the 1800s, wildly ostentatious plumed hats were the rage. Collecting beautiful (and dead) animals was en vogue. But today? Today? I'm not telling you why these beautiful feathers were stolen. Read the book!This true story about the theft of a bunch of bird skins is one of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever CS Monitor Rist, who claims to suffer from Asperger's syndrome is clever, educated, talented and skilled, and while his crime is not a violent one, he still did a horrible thing- and based on Johnson's exclusive interviews with Rist, he comes off as a greedy, little sociopath who never expressed the proper amount of remorse for his crimes. I’m afraid I did not find him to be sympathetic character at all- sorry, not sorry... Author Kirk Wallace Johnson found his subject matter quite circuitously, as he was recovering from burnout; his efforts to resettle homeless Iraqis had resulted in a case of PTSD, and led to a fishing trip, and a quasi interest in fly fishing. There, he heard about Edwin Rist, a young flautist who had plundered one of the most revered collections of preserved birds, over a hundred years old - to tear apart to sell for the purpose of making fishing flies. I was definitely fascinated with this crime, as well as reading once more about the limitless human cruelty towards nature.

Did Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs 'Glow'? Extinct Archosaurs and the Capacity for Photoluminescent Visual Displays A flute player breaks into a British museum and makes off with a million dollars worth of dead birds.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 Kirk Johnson is a good guy. I like him. His story before writing about the theft of museum specimens involves life in the US Agency for International Development, deployment in Iraq, and work on the rehoming of Iraqi refugees; his humanitarian interests and hard work in those areas is discussed, where appropriate, here and there in the book. This helps, I feel, ground things with a moral centre which never leaves any doubt that Johnson is honestly interested in doing the best, or right, thing. Which I feel is crucial, since there are occasions in the book where he reports discussions with people – Rist among them – who imply that theft from museums is ok and should even be encouraged. The Feather Thief is a riveting read. It also stands, I believe, as a reminder of how an obsession with the ornaments of nature — be they feathers, bird eggs or ivory — can wreak havoc on our scientific heritage Nature

The Feather Thief is a compelling blend of mystery, quirky salmon flytiers, and dogged natural-history enthusiasts, and it highlights the obsessive lengths that people will go to destroy—and protect—some of the world’s most valuable treasures Outside The Feather Thief has been a favorite book of mine since its release in 2018. Kirk Wallace Johnson is a talented storyteller, and to work with him to adapt this wildly brilliant book for the screen is a dream.” A true-crime tale that weaves seemingly unrelated threads into a spellbinding narrative tapestry Mark Adams, author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu Mediawan, Sony Execs Predict A European TV Project Will Soon Be Same Quality As American But For Half The Cost - MIA Market 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.This one brief conversation soon became an obsession with Johnson to find out the true story, what really happened during the robbery at Tring where drawers of bird specimens came to be stored during World War II, in the mansion of Lord Walter Rothschild. What motivated Rist an American talented musician and fly-tier to commit this crime? Author of The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast (August 9, 2022), The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century," and To Be a Friend is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind." A superb tale about obsession, nature, and man’s “unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty, whatever the cost.” A gripping natural-history detective story. Was Rist a cunning con-artist who more or less got away with the perfect, albeit clumsy crime? Or was he hopelessly addicted to feathers, to his hobby, and to his status as a young fly-tying protégé without the economic means to realise his dreams and potential? Caught by the River Among the most unbelievable of such episodes is the 2009 event in which 21-year-old music student and obsessive feather collector Edwin Rist broke into the world-famous ornithological collections of the UK’s Natural History Museum and stole 299 bird specimens. I should make it clear that these were the rather flattened, prepared skins which are kept in storage drawers in the museum research collections, not mounted, life-like specimens of the sort displayed in public galleries.