Mini Review - The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Today The Feather Thief comes out in paperback! To celebrate the paperback release, I’m sharing a mini review of this fascinating true crime book!

The Synopsis

A true crime story like no other you’ve read before

One summer evening in 2009, twenty-year-old musical prodigy Edwin Rist broke into the British Museum of Natural History. Hours later, he slipped away with a suitcase full of rare bird specimens collected over the centuries from across the world, all featuring a dazzling array of priceless feathers.

A page-turning story of a bizarre and shocking crime, The Feather Thief shines a light on our fraught relationship with the natural world’s most beautiful and valuable wonders, and one man’s relentless quest for justice.

My Mini Review

(Proof Cover)

While I have no background in the subject matter of the book, I still found it to be a truly fascinating read and I was really impressed by the sheer amount of research that had obviously gone into writing it. It was so well written and very insightful and eye opening on the topic of fly tying and illegally obtaining bird feathers to do this. It really left me in shock at the lengths people will go to and the damage they will do along the way.
The pace is fast and enjoyable and I absolutely flew through the book.
Overall I’m giving The Feather Thief 4 out of 5. It’s detailed, fascinating and brilliantly written. A real must-read.

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About the Author

Kirk Wallace Johnson served in Iraq with the US Agency for International Development in Baghdad and Fallujah as the Agency’s first co-ordinator for reconstruction in the war-torn city. He went on to found The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. His work on behalf of Iraqi refugees was profiled by This American Life, 60 Minutes, the Today Show, the subject of a feature-length documentary, The List, and a memoir, To Be a Friend is Fatal.

A Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and the recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Wurlitzer Foundation, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times and the Washington Post. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, son and daughter.