Free read Ç PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook · Kirk Wallace Johnson

The Feather Thief Beauty Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century Download ð PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook Kirk Wallace Johnson · 4 Download Free read Ç PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook · Kirk Wallace Johnson 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 darknessTwo years later Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly fishing guide told him The Feather Thief is a delightful read that successfully combines many genres biography true crime ornithology history travel and memoir to tell the story of an audacious heist of rare bird skins from the Natural History Museum at Tring in 2009 Somehow I managed not to hear about it at the time but it was huge news in terms of museum collections and endangered species crime The tendrils of this thorny case wind around Victorian explorers tycoons and fashionistas through to modern obsessions with music fly fishing and refugeesAuthor Kirk Wallace Johnson worked for USAID in Ira heading up the reconstruction of Fallujah then founded a non profit organization rehoming refugees in America Plagued by PTSD he turned to fly fishing as therapy and this was how he heard about the curious case of Edwin Rist who stole the bird specimens from Tring to sell the bright feathers to fellow hobbyists who tie elaborate Victorian style fishing fliesRist from upstate New York was a 20 year old flautist studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London Since age 11 he d been fixated on fly tying especially old fashioned salmon ties which use exotic feathers or ordinary ones dyed to look like them An online friend told him he should check out Tring the museum Walter Rothschild s financier father built for him as a twenty first birthday present when he got to London In 2008 Rist scoped out the collection pretending to be photographing the birds of paradise for a friend s bookA year later he took the train to Tring one summer night with an empty suitcase and a glass cutter broke in through a window stole 300 bird skins and made it back to his flat without incident The museum only discovered the crime a month later by accident Rist sold many feathers and whole birds via a fly tying forum and on eBay It was nearly another year and a half before the police knocked on his door having been alerted by a former law enforcement officer who encountered a museum grade bird skin at the Dutch Fly Fair and asked where it came fromHere is where things get really interesting at least for me Rist confessed immediately but a psychological evaluation diagnosed him with Asperger s on the strength of that mental health defense he was given a suspension and a large fine but no jail time so he graduated from the Royal Academy as normal and auditioned for jobs The precedent was a case from 2000 in which a young man with Asperger s who stole human remains from a Bristol graveyard was exoneratedThe book is in three parts the first gives historical context about specimen collection and the early feather trade the second is a blow by blow of Rist s crime and the aftermath including the trial and the third goes into Wallace s own investigation process He started by attending a fly tying symposium where he felt like an outsider and even received vague threats Rist was now a no go subject for this community But Wallace wasn t going to be deterred Sixty four bird skins were still missing and his uest was to track them down He started by contacting Rist s confirmed customers then interviewed Rist himself in Germany and traveled to Norway to meet someone who might have been Rist s accomplice or fall guyI happened to be a bit too familiar with the related history I ve read a lot of books that touch on Alfred Russel Wallace whose specimens formed the core of the Tring collection as well as a whole book on the feather trade for women s hats and the movement against the extermination which led to the formation of the Audubon Society Kris Radish s The Year of Necessary Lies This meant that I was a little impatient with the first few chapters but if you are new to these subjects you shouldn t have that problem For me the highlights were the reconstruction of the crime itself and Wallace s inuiry into whether the Asperger s diagnosis was accurate and a fair excuse for Rist s behaviorThis whole story is stranger than fiction which would make it a great selection for readers who don t often pick up nonfiction perhaps expecting it to be dry or taxing Far from it This is the very best sort of nonfiction wide ranging intelligent and grippingOriginally published with images on my blog Bookish Beck

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

The Feather Thief Beauty Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century Download ð PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook Kirk Wallace Johnson · 4 Download Free read Ç PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook · Kirk Wallace Johnson 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 Haven t read something so engrossing all year What a fascinating and exciting book

The Feather Thief Beauty Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century Download ð PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook Kirk Wallace Johnson · 4 Download Free read Ç PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook · Kirk Wallace Johnson A rollicking true crime adventure and a thought provoking exploration of the human drive to possess natural beauty for readers of The Stranger in the Woods The Lost City of Z and The Orchid ThiefOn 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 Described as the pursuit of justice in the feather underground Kirk Wallace Johnson s The Feather Thief Beauty Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century delivers Picking this book up I wasn t sure what to expect One thing for sure is that this book is about so much than the crime Edwin Rist stealing somewhere in the range of 1M worth of rare feathers primarily collected during the Victorian era In a very accessible way Johnson recounts the obsession of Victorians to collect things including rare bird feathers which pushed specific bird populations to extinction or the brink of extinction Enter present day fly tiers who are obsessed with creating ties with the those rare and exotic feathers and are not overly concerned where these feathers come from Insightful and compelling 425 stars