000 02227nam a22002778i 4500
001 020106
005 20231009192440.0
008 310518s20182018nyu b 001 0 eng
020 _a9781101981610 (hardcover)
050 0 0 _aHV6665.G72
_bJ64 2018
082 1 _a364.16 Joh
_2
100 1 _aJohnson, Kirk Wallace
245 1 4 _aThe feather thief :
_bbeauty, obsession, and the natural history heist of the century
_c/ Kirk Wallace Johnson.
260 _aNew York
_b: Viking
_c, c2018
300 _a308 pages
_c; 24 cm.
504 _aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520 _a"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"--Dust jacket flap.
546 _aEnglish
610 1 4 _aNatural History Museum (London, England)
650 1 4 _aTheft from museums
650 1 4 _aZoological specimens
650 1 4 _aFly tying
651 4 _aGreat Britian
942 _cMO
999 _c237147
_d237147