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. Johnson’s narrative entertainingly recounts not just Rist’s strange story but that of the pioneering Victorian ornithologists too New Statesman

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.I admit I still don’t fully understand fly fishing, or the obsession with Salmon fliers. I still don’t have any interest in the sport, and I never will- but one thing is for sure- I was never bored while reading this book! The Feather Thief tells the true-crime tale of Edwin Rist robbing the British Museum of Natural History of hundreds of irreplaceable bird skins, and the greed, obsession, and twisted logic that had compelled him to do so. Fascinating… An engagingly written story … you’ll be reading it when you should be doing other things i paper One summer evening in 2009, twenty-year-old musical prodigy Edwin Rist broke into the Natural History Museum at Tring, home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world. Once inside, Rist grabbed as many rare bird specimens as he was able to carry before escaping into the darkness.

Author of The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast (August 9, 2022), The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century," and To Be a Friend is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind." These feathers come from some of the rarest birds in the world, such as the Resplendent Quetzal, the King Bird of Paradise, the Flame Bowerbird, and the Blue Chatterer. Due to the rarity of the birds, the world came together and enacted a treaty to protect them, and other rare and endangered species. It became known as the "CITES" treaty (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). It's the basis for the laws prohibiting trade in ivory, for example, as well as many other animals and plants. Not only a story of Rist and his exploits, the book covers many other subjects. Early explorers searching for unknown species, the whole phenomenon of "feather fashion", the history of salmon fly tying, and the fly tying community itself. The author melds these subjects into the story seamlessly. I was definitely fascinated with this crime, as well as reading once more about the limitless human cruelty towards nature.Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.