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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnson, Kirk W., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rist, Edwin.

Natural History Museum (London, England).

Theft from museums--Great Britain--Case studies.

Theft from museums.

Zoological specimens--Great Britain--Case studies.

Zoological specimens.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Case studies.

True crime stories.

Physical Description:

xiv, 308 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 22 cm

Other Title:

Beauty, obsession, and the natural history heist of the century

Place of Publication:

[New York, N.Y.?] : Penguin Books, 2019.

Summary:

"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, Edwin grabbed hundreds of bird skins--some collected 150 years earlier--and escaped into the darkness. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? What became of Edwin and the missing skins? The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, The Feather Thief is a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature"--Back cover.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Includes A Penguin readers guide to the Feather Thief (12 pages).

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

Local Notes:

The Landau-Savedoff Memorial Reference Collection of Cultural and Heritage Purloinment.

ISBN:

9781101981634

1101981636

OCLC:

1077959451