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

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A flute player breaks into a British museum and makes off with a million dollars worth of dead birds. A gripping natural-history detective story. Was Rist a cunning con-artist who more or less got away with the perfect, albeit clumsy crime? Or was he hopelessly addicted to feathers, to his hobby, and to his status as a young fly-tying protégé without the economic means to realise his dreams and potential? Caught by the River

To not give the entire book away, Rist burglarizes the museum, and makes away with hundreds of the rare birds. It seems that he has committed the perfect crime, as he gets away with it for quite a while. Eventually, people become suspicious of Rist, as he seems to have an unending suppy of the feathers for sale (the feathers can be sold, if it can be proven that they were obtained before the CITES treaty went into effect). He is arrested, but is given a slap on the wrist and released.A young "savant", Edwin Rist, had everything going for him. A brilliant flautist, he and his brother (also a savant), discovered the art of tying Atlantic Salmon flies. Throwing themselves into the hobby, they soon discovered the extreme costs and rarity of some of the required feathers. Beautiful, Big, Bold Dinosaur Books: of Molina-Pérez and Larramendi’s Theropods, Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2, and Parker et al.’s Saurian A superb tale about obsession, nature, and man’s “unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty, whatever the cost.” Exclusive: An adaptation of Kirk Wallace Johnson’s bestselling The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century is in the works for the small screen. Jenna Bush Hager and Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group, have teamed with Johnson to develop a series adaptation of the true-crime non-fiction book. Optioned in a highly competitive situation, The Feather Thief marks Hager’s first project in development under her first-look deal at Universal Studio Group. Johnson will pen the series adaptation. Ben Spector will executive produce on behalf of Hager’s production company.

All in all, I highly recommend this book. To sportsmen, to crime buffs, to pyschology students, and to anyone else who loves a good mystery. It turns out that these were valuable bird skins, with beautiful ornamental feathers. These feathers receive high prices from collectors who practice the obscure hobby of Victorian fly-tying. The “art of fly tying”, notably salmon ties, is one exotic, so rare and esoteric to be unheard of unless you have either read this book or indulged in this obsessive hobby. The heist which Edwin Rist performed was audacious, and devastating...Talk Show Halloween Costumes: Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, More Musicians Inspire Looks on Multiple Shows I could not summarize what this book is about better than this quote from author, Kirk Wallace Johnson.