The Feather Thief
Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
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The Feather Thief
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Narrated by:
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MacLeod Andrews
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Written by:
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Kirk Wallace Johnson
About this listen
As heard on NPR's This American Life
“Absorbing... Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” (Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air)
“One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” (Christian Science Monitor)
A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for fans of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief.
On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, 20-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.
©2018 Kirk Wallace Johnson (P)2018 Penguin AudioYou may also enjoy...
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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What the critics say
“Fascinating . . . a complex tale of greed, deception, and ornithological sabotage.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“Fascinating from the first page to the last - you won’t be able to put it down.” (Southern Living)
“A fascinating book . . . the kind of intelligent reported account that alerts us to a threat and that, one hopes, will never itself be endangered.” (The Wall Street Journal)
What listeners say about The Feather Thief
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Roberta W
- 2024-07-04
Fascinating
Who would have imagined that ancient feathers would be so precious? Not me, that is, until I understood their historical significance. This made the theft so outrageous, and for such self-indulgent purposes. The story was fascinating and the threads of the trail the author chased read like a thriller. No fairy tale ending though, and that was mildly dissatisfying, but real life is like that.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Christa Unruh
- 2022-05-09
A hard tale of mankind’s selfishness and depravity
I considered not listening to this story so many times because it hurt my heart so much but ended up pushing through. I wasn’t expecting the detailed historical legacy of the feather industry in part one, and felt utter disgust at just how insatiable the appetite is and was for animals.
I was expecting this to be a story form about the heist but it was more of a historical book, beginning with demand for birds for science, then for fashion, and then for flys. This was in part why I considered not listening anymore, that and my stomach couldn’t handle the details lol.
Ultimately this is a good book, well written and read. I do recommend it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Emily Holmes
- 2021-01-12
Simply Superb!
A phenomenal book. Would recommend to everyone, as it speaks to a wide audience. The historical aspect is especially interesting.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Brenda
- 2022-05-20
history science fashion and greed
This is a very enlightening book, with many areas of interest. great for environmental study.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Matthew M. Quann
- 2018-09-19
Flights of Fancy
Deciding to read The Feather Thief should really come down to how much you want to know about birds. Birds are animals I'm perfectly willing to appreciate at a distance but, barring a series of childhood budgies, they've never been my particular thing. All the same, I've got mad respect for Darwin, Wallace, and their culture-rupturing scientific discovery made possible by tropical birds, so I thought this book would be up my alley.
The bad thing about this audiobook is that the first half seemed endlessly dull to me. I found myself trying the limits of my aural capacity, speeding up the narrator's voice to a comical clip as he talked about the history of bird collections and the fly-tying community. Some of the history was alright, but the chain of custody for Wallace's birds put me into a despondent state that was only deepened by the fly-tiers: I just didn't get it. What's more, when I wasn't sold on the fly-tying, I couldn't get into Edwin Rist's obsession with the archaic practice that drove him to steal a suitcase full of birds.
Luckily, by a little over the halfway mark, Kirk W. Johnson begins to lay out his own obsession with the case of stolen bird feathers and heads out on what ends up being a pretty exciting investigation. Even though I was often bored for the first half, I ended up being compelled by what turned out to be a less obvious crime than I'd initially assumed. Indeed, the later chapters when Johnson begins to interview the fly-tying community, hunt down the lost feathers, and struggle to balance his personal life with the hunt for justice amount to a story that reminded me a bit of the podcast Serial.
I don't know that I can give this a ringing endorsement, after all I almost considered giving up and moving on through most of the book. What I can offer is a suggestion: pick this one up if you have an interest in birds, but dodge it if you are coming for a true-crime thriller alone.
#Audible1
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- shalot
- 2020-01-20
My Interest Waned
The first two parts of the story were very interesting, but I found myself getting bored by the personal narrative of part 3. I didn't find the conclusion satisfying or the author involvement really relevant. As for the audiobook, the narrator was ok but once he started doing accents, he lost me. I wish he hadn't done any and just kept to his own voice.
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