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

by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Hardcover, 2018

Call number

364.16 JOH

Collection

Publication

Viking (2018), 320 pages

Description

"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.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member lisapeet
This was a solidly enjoyable piece of narrative nonfiction. To say that it has all the requisite elements sounds like faint praise, but I appreciate when an author does the necessary research to set the scene—especially if there are several topics that converge, as in this one—and then uses
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just enough of it to scaffold a good story. The fact that Johnson's obsession with solving the last pieces of the crime is never realized is both a little unsatisfying and humanizing; the book may be subtitled "the Natural History Heist of the Century," but this isn't a whodunnit that ties up all the loose ends before the last page, nor does it dig too deeply into the strange subculture of fly-tying. Rather, it's an entertaining yarn—the real fun is in the telling, as I realized when I had a second good time recounting the basic plot points to a friend a few days after reading it.
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LibraryThing member 1Randal
As a fly fisherman, fly tier, and former policeman, I found this book to be an absolute home run!
A young "savant", Edwin Rist, had everything going for him. A brilliant flautist, he and his brother (also a savant), discovered the art of tying Atlantic Salmon flies. Throwing themselves into the
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hobby, they soon discovered the extreme costs and rarity of some of the required feathers.
These feathers come from some of the rarest birds in the world, such as the Resplendent Quetzal, the King Bird of Paradise, the Flame Bowerbird, and the Blue Chatterer. Due to the rarity of the birds, the world came together and enacted a treaty to protect them, and other rare and endangered species. It became known as the "CITES" treaty (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). It's the basis for the laws prohibiting trade in ivory, for example, as well as many other animals and plants.
Rather than simply using substitute feathers (which the majority of us make do with), Edwin concocts a scheme to break into the British Natural History Museum. The museum housed a vast collection of the birds that Rist needed feathers from. The bird carcasses were collected over hundreds of years, and were being stored for scientific purposes.
To not give the entire book away, Rist burglarizes the museum, and makes away with hundreds of the rare birds. It seems that he has committed the perfect crime, as he gets away with it for quite a while. Eventually, people become suspicious of Rist, as he seems to have an unending suppy of the feathers for sale (the feathers can be sold, if it can be proven that they were obtained before the CITES treaty went into effect). He is arrested, but is given a slap on the wrist and released.
Along comes the author. A fascinating man in his own right, Johnson is a modern day Sherlock Holmes. He personifies the word persistent. Through an unending, multi-year investigation, Johnson uncovers much more information. The investigation, and it's revelations, really is quite a fascinating story in itself. Again, I don't want to spoil the book for any readers, so I will stop here!
Not only a story of Rist and his exploits, the book covers many other subjects. Early explorers searching for unknown species, the whole phenomenon of "feather fashion", the history of salmon fly tying, and the fly tying community itself. The author melds these subjects into the story seamlessly.
The entire book flows along very well. You cannot help but learn a great deal about many, varied subjects, painlessly. You will find yourself at times pulling for Rist, and yet at times disgusted by his greed. You wonder how the author found the willpower to keep going on in his investigation, when he hits so many dead ends.
All in all, I highly recommend this book. To sportsmen, to crime buffs, to pyschology students, and to anyone else who loves a good mystery.
Thank you to Edelweiss, who provided me a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.
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LibraryThing member streamsong
This is a bizarre true crime account. The perpetrator, Edwin Rist, was an exceptionally bright child and a gifted flautist. But when introduced to the Victorian art of Salmon fly tying, Edwin became obsessed.

Modern day trout fly tying has little to do with the Victorian art. Modern fly tiers
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reproduce common bugs and flies and match them to insect hatches on specific creeks using common materials. A successful fly is one that catches fish. It's a hobby my father loved, and he taught me as a child to tie trout flies.

The Victorians, however, were fond of gaudy excess. They began tying flies for salmon fishing made of bright exotic feathers. These became exquisite works of art.

The art of tying the Victorian flies is practiced today, but unfortunately many of the feathers used are from birds that are rare or even extinct.

Thus there is a thriving black market for the rarest of the feathers required. So when Rist became short of money, wanting to buy a a nice quality flute and the rare feathers for his hobby where he enjoyed a measure of fame, he formed the plan to steal rare specimens from the British Museum of Natural History.

In 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, he carried out his plan, stealing hundreds of rare bird skins, many collected up to 150 years earlier.

I loved the way this book began; the background info including the story of Alfred Russell Wallace who independently came up with the theory of evolution after studying the birds of Malaya; the Victorian feather trade; the explanation of tying the arcane salmon flies and the heist from the British Museum of Natural History.

I thought the ending weaker - perhaps because there wasn't really closure in the case; perhaps because I had the feeling that this would have made a fascinating magazine article, but had a lot of filler to expand it into a book.
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LibraryThing member akblanchard
In The Feather Thief, author Kirk Wallace Johnson weaves together several plotlines to make a remarkable whole. His anti-hero is Edwin Rist, a gifted young musician whose obsession with the antiquated Victorian art of fly-tying leads him to relieve the renowned British Natural History Museum of the
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most prized birds in its its ornithology collection. This bold theft has a number of ramifications, not only for Rist, but also for the scientific community and Rist's contacts in the tight if shadowy coterie of modern fly-tiers. The author becomes part of the story as he obsessively works on recovering the bird skins that went missing after the heist.

Sure to appeal to readers interested in exotic birds, true crime, lost art forms and/or mental health, this well-written, well-researched book is gripping from beginning to end. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member tangledthread
This interesting work of nonfiction brought me into a world that I knew nothing about....the world of classic fly tying. The author stumbles across this world when he learns to use fly fishing as a way to relax from the stress of his work trying to safely resettle Iraqi refugees who had helped the
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US during the war. While fishing with his local guide in New Mexico, he learns about a young man who committed a heist of rare bird specimens from the Tring Museum in the UK.

Background information is provided about the acquisition of those specimens by Alfred Russel Wallace
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LibraryThing member nyiper
Brilliant!!!! I loved this, from the first page to the end, including the acknowledgements. I just wish there were LOTS more books by Johnson out there---he is a terrific writer. May he find another subject quickly! I'm sure he was as overcommitted to his List Project for Iraq translators as he was
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for his research on this book---just amazing! Fascinating and so very current!
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LibraryThing member msf59
”Initially, the story of the Tring heist—filled with quirky and obsessive individuals, strange birds, curio-filled museums, archaic fly recipes, Victorian hats, plume smugglers, grave robbers, and, at the heart of it all, a flute-playing thief—had been a welcome diversion from the unrelenting
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pressure of my work with refugees.”

How a twenty-year old American music prodigy, broke into a small British museum and stole the feathers and skins of dozens of rare bird specimens, worth a veritable fortune, is just part of this oddball story. The author's relentless pursuit of this young man, who had escaped capture, is another key element, along with a look at the art of Victorian salmon fly-tying and the black market feather trade.

This is solid narrative nonfiction. Nicely researched and well-written.
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LibraryThing member bemislibrary
Great resources for scientific research were forever lost when Edwin Rist stole irreplaceable bird specimens from the British Museum of Natural History. The book starts with Alfred Russel Wallace’s initial quest to obtain and then protect the bird skins at all costs. What tool months and year to
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achieve, were lost in just a few hours and for what, fly-fishing hooks to display. This well documented tale starts with a flourish and ends with disappointment.

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. Although encouraged, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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LibraryThing member bblum
Edwin Rist, a home schooled kid from New England stumbles into the world of fly tiers at age 11 in 1999 and becomes obsessed. His indulgent parents allowed him and his brother to follow their interests and took them to a Fly Tying Symposium. Edwin was hooked. What makes this story is the history of
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fly tiers and Alfred Russel Wallace who was trying to make a name for himself to become a member of the Royal Geographical Society. An amazing, under funded young man in the same era as Darwin who also recognized biological evolution. Exotic feathers became fashionable, plus Victorian fly tiers followed “recipes” for making flies with exotic feathers for show. Edwin dives into this world and while schooling in London makes a feather heist from the Tring Museum to support his desire for a golden flute and his feather addiction which is shared by many others we are introduced to in this book. Quick, interesting read into a world of feather obsession and the efforts to solve this theft.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
Johnson weaves together a lot of threads here: David Wallace and Darwin, Victorian fashion, fly fishing, and the life of one kid who stole a bunch of feathers from a museum, followed by Johnson's own obsession with tracking down all of the stolen feathers. All of these threads are interesting in
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their own way, but ultimately I think Johnson has trouble pinning down any meaning in this narrative, for himself or for the reader. In the end, it is a rather unsatisfying story of a kid who got away with a crime, and of how people are willing to subvert morality in the quest for something they really want.
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LibraryThing member loraineo
Good book! I never knew feathers could be so interesting! Well written, easy to follow story of a young man obsessed with making fishing lures and gets himself involved in stealing exotic feathers.. The author goes into great detail about the history of many birds and the abuse and near extinction
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of many,
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LibraryThing member FormerEnglishTeacher
More information about fly tying than you would even need to know, but interesting nonetheless. The story of the historical theft of hundreds of feathers and birds from the British Museum of Natural History by a teenage fly tying phenom. The heist was amateur, sloppy, and costly for the museum even
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when the culprit, Edwin Rist, was caught. The journalistic research and leather wearing reporting is impressive. Copious notes at the end of the book for anyone who feels a need to examine the theft further. You’ll learn more about fly tying that you could imagine.
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LibraryThing member adzebill
Some of my colleagues were't impressed at having to read about Wallace and Darwin and museum collections all over again, but I quite enjoyed it and found it was good context to put the perpetrator's actions in context. The author was striving for some reveal or resolution from all his sleuthing
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that wasn't really there, but everything leading up to it was exceptionally well told – an insight into a world most museum curators have never heard of.
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LibraryThing member maryreinert
Absolutely loved this book. Who would ever have thought that feathers could be so valuable or that the greed for feathers could have such an impact on our natural world. The author tells the story of a theft of rare feathers from a museum in England. Many of these feathers and bird skins that been
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brought to England from all over the world during Victorian England. The thief was a young very gifted man named Edwin Rist, a flutist from America.

The author goes back to explain how the obsession with feathers began particularly in fashion. During Victorian England, women would wear entire birds on their hats and the rarer the bird, the most fashionable it was. Thus the wealthy paid crazy prices for the birds encouraging traders to comb the world searching for these birds and bringing thousands back to England and America. The men soon got in on the act with using the rare feathers to tie fishing ties particularly for the salmon. The history of this fashion and the over the top obsession with feathers for tiers is interesting and humorous if it wasn't so sad.

Johnson takes it on himself to track down the bird skins that were not returned to the museum after Rist was caught. The Asperger's Defense was used to get Rist exonerated from his crime. Throughout the book, the author introduces many individuals who are caught up in this crime. Totally fascinating read.
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LibraryThing member EllenH
I'd been meaning to read this since it came out, but other more flashy things presented themselves. Little did I know I'd be so engrossed in it that the day flew by! Reminds one of other art theft books I've read, even The Stranger in the Woods. Although this is a mystery without a murder, it
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brings to mind the sense of blamelessness people use to justify their lack of ethics. Who'd have thought fly tying could be related to encouraging the sale & loss of endangered species? Johnson tells this story so well, that even as a non fly fisherman, I could be interested in the tale of Edwin Rist.
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LibraryThing member pomo58
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson reads almost like two distinct books. One is about the theft and trial, with a lot of wonderful context. The other is, for lack of a better term, the aftermath and Johnson's own story.

I loved
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the first book but found the second to be slower, less interesting, and more than a little self-indulgent. That said, the first part still makes the book worth getting. The storytelling is well-paced with interesting bits about museums and their collections and about the fly tying community. I would have been satisfied with the book ending there. The rest, while not bad, also was not good.

As I mentioned, I still recommend the book and no doubt some will find the second part more interesting than I did.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.
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LibraryThing member Bodagirl
A fascinating intersection of endangered species, fly fishing, history, true crime, and obsession. I suggest this for readers who want something investigative and page-turning.
LibraryThing member debs4jc
This fascinating book introduced me to so many things I didn't know about before. Yes, there really was a man who broke into a natural history museum to steal feathers. Why would someone want to steal feathers? Well people who are into a fly-tying (making fancy lures for fishing) use feathers, and
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those who are trying to copy specific Victorian lures sometimes think that using the authentic feathers that they used creates a superior lure. These feathers are from super-rare birds and they were most often collected in the 1800s when explorers were out catching, killing, stuffing, and otherwise preserving animals and hides and pelts of all kinds and and sending them back to Britain. Nowadays we try to preserve endangered and rare birds and even today these pelts have valuable things to tell us about environmental and species history since we know when and where they were collected. That is unless they are stolen and sold for money because the people that are obsessed with tying authentic Victorian fly fishing lures will pay a lot of money to get these super rare feathers. And then the thief, Edwin Rist, is caught with the goods -well some of them, and pretty much confesses to the whole thing. But he doesn't serve any jail time for the crime because his defense claims he has Asperger's Syndrome. Yes the story just keeps getting stranger and stranger and it really does keep your interest for the entire book. Kudos to the author for such an interesting book. Lovers of history, birds, nature and crime stories should definitely check this one out.
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LibraryThing member gpangel
The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson is a 2019 Penguin publication.

This is another book that has sat on my TBR list for an entire year. I added it because it was labeled as true crime and because the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. However, every time I thought about reading it, I
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changed my mind, because I wasn’t sure if I would fully understand the premise, for one thing, and for another, I was afraid it would bore me silly. It just didn’t sound like a topic that would interest me in the least. I decided I should at least give it a try, because all those positive reviews had to mean something, right?

I admit I still don’t fully understand fly fishing, or the obsession with Salmon fliers. I still don’t have any interest in the sport, and I never will- but one thing is for sure- I was never bored while reading this book!

It seems there is nothing out there in this world that doesn’t have a dark underbelly…

The author of this book first learned of Edwin Rist while fly fishing in Mexico, and quickly became as obsessed with this crime as Edwin Rist was with rare bird skins and Salmon fliers.

What are Salmon fliers? Apparently, they are a brightly colored lure, made with bird feathers that mimics small fish, which Salmon will snap at. Victorian, exotic, or rare feathers are highly sought after by collectors and expert ‘tyers’.

Edwin Rist, a musician, also happened to be an expert Salmon tyer. To that end, in 2009, Edwin broke into the British Natural History Museum and stole 299 rare bird skins, including 37 Birds of Paradise.

Once Kirk Wallace Johnson heard about this most unusual heist, he jumped down the rabbit hole with both feet, beginning a long journey for the truth, which culminated in this book.

I don’t understand the concept of being an expert ‘tyer’ if you don’t even fly fish. Not only that, it is my understanding that the salmon can’t tell the difference anyway. It all seemed like such a tremendous waste. The history, however, that sets these events in motion is utterly fascinating, if a bit peculiar.

The author traces the origins of the feathers and how they came to be in the museum, which is far more interesting than one might think. From there the book builds into a detective story, then a legal drama, then finally a personal quest for the whole truth and maybe some modicum of justice.

Not to give too much away, but evidently, Rist earned some money from his daring heist, selling some of the feathers/ skins on the black market. Yes, there really is a black market for these feathers and a lucrative one at that. I knew one could find all manner of things for sale on eBay but – vintage bird feathers?

While Rist was eventually caught, his legal troubles didn’t turn out the way I had anticipated,which is one of the reasons why Johnson felt compelled to draw out as much of the truth as possible.

Some mysteries remain unsolved, but one can take a few educated guesses about what happened and why, though that knowledge doesn’t bring about much satisfaction.

Today, Rist uses a different name, and has carved out a unique niche for himself by playing heavy metal music with his flute- perhaps the flute he bought with his eBay profits. (Johnson didn’t reveal Rist's assumed name, but a simple Google search brought up his infamous Metallica cover of ‘Master of Puppets’ right away-you have to see it to believe it.)

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...

As to the writing and organization of the book- the presentation is very well done. However, the author does take an interesting stance here. He took a risk, in my opinion, by inserting himself into the saga by calling out the fly-fishing community for their role in helping to create the atmosphere within in this sub-culture that makes this crime, and others like it, so alluring- and lucrative. He seems to feel they, too are responsible- although his words have probably fallen on deaf ears.

I usually become exasperated if an author refuses to maintain strict neutrality when writing nonfiction. I want the facts, not the author's interpretation of them, or his or her opinion. In this case, however, I can understand why Johnson felt compelled to make such a bold move and he was right in doing so.

Ultimately, this is a fascinating True Crime saga. I found myself immersed in it, more than I ever imagined possible. I learned some interesting history, and a lot about bird feathers/skins, salmon fliers and expert tiers, as well the strange obsessions of men. The greed that results from these obsessions, of course, is a story as old as man.

While this may not sound like a book that would appeal to a broad audience, it should. Those familiar with the sport of fly-fishing will understand aspects and nuances many of us never will, about this case, but historians, true crime readers, mystery fans and even fans of legal dramas, will find this to be a very compelling story.

4 stars
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LibraryThing member tgraettinger
Interesting story, but I wasn't as thrilled about the author's writing style.
LibraryThing member jeanbmac
Fantastic and so well researched. I loved it
LibraryThing member tduvally
More interesting than you think it would be.
LibraryThing member tduvally
More interesting than you think it would be.
LibraryThing member suedutton
Really interesting and enjoyable, but unsatisfying ending.
LibraryThing member JBD1
A good book about a thoroughly repugnant and repulsive incident. I was mostly furious the entire time I read.

Awards

Edgar Award (Nominee — Fact Crime — 2019)
Notable Books List (Nonfiction — 2019)
Illinois Reads (Adult — 2019)

Pages

320

ISBN

110198161X / 9781101981610
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