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

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Johnson, Kirk W. (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: New York : Viking, [2018]
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Table of Contents:
  • 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.