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

In 2009, with little more than a glass cutter, LED flashlight, and a suitcase, young American Edwin Rist broke into the British Natural History Museum and ran off with 299 rare bird skins, including a few dozen prized king birds of paradise, which had been taken 150 years ago from the forests of New Guinea and the Malay Archipelago. Rist, it turns out, was motivated by an infatuation with fishing flies, but Johnson casts the story further into our relationship with feathers—from the Victorian era of Darwin and naturalist expeditions to fashion’s demands for ostriches and egrets to today’s anglers and their fly tie recipe lore. Throughout, Johnson skillfully threads in questions about our desire to claim, collect, and categorize nature. In this Susan Orlean meets Agatha Christie true thriller, you’ll first be hooked on the unfurling mystery, then pulled in deep by an eccentric cast of plume hucksters, big game hunters, scientists, “shady dentists,” and extreme fly-tiers.