Take a photo of a barcode or cover
asolis 's review for:
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
by Kirk Wallace Johnson
adventurous
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
True crime meets natural history. An interesting story about three flawed and obsessive men reaping the wages of whiteness. The last third fell a bit flat, but I enjoyed it overall even if no one was likable.
We start with a Victorian gentleman scholar hoping to make a name for himself by collecting exotic bird specimens. Fast forward to the 1990s. Our thief, Edwin, is growing up to be an entitled young man, to the extent that he decides he can make better use of some dead birds than the museum can. Our narrator, suffering from PTSD and looking for a win, refocuses his savior complex onto changing the conclusion of Edwin's story to one that matches his own sense of justice. This last part becomes a bit of a slog, as it is mostly the story of how the author finds out the information that leads
Part of me really enjoyed the storytelling, or at least the first two thirds, and part of me struggled because I came to despise almost everyone in it. Our "brilliant" criminal is a smug, entitled white man, who is given an odd amount of reverence just because he has the necessary skills and childhood privilege to be notable in the fields of fly tying and flute playing.And of course, he gets off scot free because of his *promising* future and a highly questionable mental health argument. Our "noble" narrator is so obsessed with carceral justice that he spends years researching the crime and asking its victims whether they wouldn't feel better if the thief had served time. And how can he afford all this international investigative travel? And why is he dragging his new family along on this goose chase? And of course our historic scholar carries all the dubious standing of being a European explorer in "exotic" lands.
We start with a Victorian gentleman scholar hoping to make a name for himself by collecting exotic bird specimens. Fast forward to the 1990s. Our thief, Edwin, is growing up to be an entitled young man, to the extent that he decides he can make better use of some dead birds than the museum can. Our narrator, suffering from PTSD and looking for a win, refocuses his savior complex onto changing the conclusion of Edwin's story to one that matches his own sense of justice. This last part becomes a bit of a slog, as it is mostly the story of how the author finds out the information that leads
Part of me really enjoyed the storytelling, or at least the first two thirds, and part of me struggled because I came to despise almost everyone in it. Our "brilliant" criminal is a smug, entitled white man, who is given an odd amount of reverence just because he has the necessary skills and childhood privilege to be notable in the fields of fly tying and flute playing.
For those interested in the audio version, I'll mention that the narrator sounds like Matthew McConaughey without the twang.