02571cam a2200349 i 4500 371222112 TxAuBib 20190226120000.0 180319s2018||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2018013162 9781101981610 110198161X 9780525559092 0525559094 (OCoLC)999407802 TxAuBib rda Johnson, Kirk Wallace. The feather thief : beauty, obsession, and the natural history heist of the century / Kirk Wallace Johnson. New York : Viking, [2018] x, 308 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references and index. 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. 20190226. Natural History Museum (London, England.) Theft from museums Great Britain Case studies. Zoological specimens Great Britain Case studies. Fly tying Great Britain Case studies. T3L