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.
For me, the most interesting part of this book was the discussion on birds and how knowledge about them led to scientific breakthroughs around sexual selection. I also enjoyed learning about what museums do with old bird specimens, and how they contribute to scientific progress.
The book also spends a lot of time covering Edwin's hobby of fly-tying and its community of hobbyists, and I didn't find that very interesting or palatable. The fact that people would pluck feathers from near extinct or protected birds just to tie a fly that they don't even use to fish (many of them don't know how to fish) is wasteful and silly. It was especially hard to read about their cavalier attitudes towards the robbery, explaining away the disappearance of irreplaceable artifacts by asking why museums needed so many of these bird specimens in the first place.
In the end, this book is an interesting tale of an unusual robbery, but my enjoyment of it was curtailed by the greed and attitude of Edwin and his like-minded fly-tying community. I find birds to be fascinating and scientific advancement to be of paramount importance, so it was really hard for me to read about people actively working against that just so they can make trinkets.
Readaroo Rating: 3 stars
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