The feather thief : beauty, obsession, and the natural history heist of the century Cover Image

Book

The feather thief : beauty, obsession, and the natural history heist of the century / Kirk Wallace Johnson.

Summary:

On a cool June evening in 2009, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist grabbed hundreds of bird skins - some collected 150 years earlier - and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? This is the gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice. Print run 50,000.

Record details

ISBN: 9781101981610
ISBN: 110198161X
ISBN: 9780525559092
ISBN: 0525559094
Physical Description: x, 308 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Publisher: New York : Viking, [2018]
Copyright: ©2018

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-280 and 283-289) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Prologue -- Dead birds and rich men. The trials of Alfred Russel Wallace ; Lord Rothschild's museum ; The feather fever ; Birth of a movement ; The Victorian Brotherhood of Fly-tiers ; The future of fly-tying -- The Tring heist. Featherless in London ; Plan for Museum Invasion.Doc ; The case of the broken window ; "A very unusual crime" ; Hot birds on a cold trail ; Fluteplayer 1988 ; Behind bars ; Rot in hell ; The diagnosis ; The Asperger's defense ; The missing skins -- Truth and consequences. The 21st International Fly Tying Symposium ; The lost memory of the ocean ; Chasing leads in a time machine ; Dr. Prum's thumb drive ; "I'm not a thief" ; Three days in Norway ; Michelangelo vanishes ; Flowers in the bloodstream.