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

As heard on NPR’s This American Life and praised by Fresh Air‘s Maureen Corrigan as “absorbing… though it’s non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” The Christian Science Monitor calls it “one of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.”

From the author of The Fishermen and the Dragon comes a rollicking true-crime adventure that reads like a thriller. On a June evening in 2009, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist slipped into London’s Natural History Museum at Tring—home to one of the world’s largest ornithological collections—and stole hundreds of rare bird specimens. Some had been collected 150 years earlier by Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin’s contemporary, who’d risked everything to gather them. But why would anyone steal dead birds?

The answer lies in an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, where Victorian salmon flies command staggering prices and obsession knows no bounds. When author Kirk Wallace Johnson first heard about the heist from his fly-fishing guide, he became consumed by the case, launching a years-long, worldwide investigation to track down the missing skins and understand what drives someone to such extremes.

Perfect for readers who loved The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief, this captivating narrative explores the intersection of beauty, obsession, and man’s destructive instinct to harvest nature’s treasures. It’s a story about justice, passion, and the peculiar lengths people will go to possess the extraordinary.

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