A superb tale about obsession, nature, and man’s “unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty, whatever the cost.”
A captivating tale of beautiful, rare, priceless, and stolen feathers.
Journalist Johnson (To Be a Friend Is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind, 2013) was fly-fishing in a New Mexico stream when he first heard about the “feather thief” from his guide. The author became obsessed with the story of Edwin Rist, a young American flautist and expert tier of salmon flies, who, after performing at a June 2009 London concert, broke into the nearby British Natural History Museum at Tring to steal 299 rare bird skins, including 37 of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace’s “beloved” Birds of Paradise. Johnson dove headfirst into a five-year journey “deep into the feather underground, a world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, cokeheads and big game hunters, ex-detectives and shady dentists.” Everything the author touches in this thoroughly engaging true-crime tale turns to storytelling gold. These intriguing tales include that of Darwin rival Wallace’s extreme hardships trying to gather rare birds from around the world and losing many of them in a sinking ship; the incredibly wealthy Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild’s museum at Tring, which his father built for him when he was 29 to house his extensive collection of animals and birds, alive and dead; and the sad history of 19th-century women demanding the most exotic birds for their fashionable hats, which resulted in hundreds of millions of birds being killed. Throughout, Johnson’s flair for telling an engrossing story is, like the beautiful birds he describes, exquisite. Furthermore, like an accomplished crime reporter, the author recounts the story of how Rist was located and arrested by a local, female detective nearly 15 months after the break-in; the trial, which features an unexpected twist; and the fate of much of his booty.
A superb tale about obsession, nature, and man’s “unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty, whatever the cost.”Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-98161-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
This elementary guide to economics for the layperson maintains an insistently jokey style that strains to amuse but more often just lards the text with annoying verbiage. Buchholz, a member of the White House Economic Policy Council from 1989 to 1993 and now president of a consulting firm, sets out to provide an introduction to key economic concepts and thinkers. Starting with familiar subjects (the 1990 recession, inflation, government deficits, fiscal and monetary policy), he discusses the mechanisms of the free market. He then looks at some topical issues—education, environmental regulation, and health care—from an economist's viewpoint. International trade, foreign investment, and currency exchange are also covered, with a strong free-trade bias. Buchholz provides sensible but simplistic advice on personal investing and concludes with a brief history of economic thought from Adam Smith to contemporary supply-side economics. Scattered throughout are glib or unsupported statements such as: ``The Soviet Union collapsed because its rusty vicious system could not keep up with expectations for economic improvement.'' And unqualified conclusions abound: ``Smart governments know that by allowing trade, nations gently coerce their citizens to shift precious resources from low-productivity to high-productivity industries.'' Whatever useful information Buchholz does provide is smothered in deadening humor. He cannot even keep himself from calling economics the ``dismal science,'' going so far as to devote a passage to the question of whether Adam Smith himself was ``dismal.'' (Smith seems to have redeemed his humanity in Buchholz's eyes by tripping into a ``huge nauseous pool of goop'' while visiting a factory.) Like an irritating traveling companion distracting one from the scenery, this tries too hard to entertain while en route.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93902-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this sturdy if at times tortured field report cum memoir of a geochemical visit to a series of ice-covered lakes in Antarctica, Green takes measure not just of calcium, phosphate, and magnesium, but of his life and the mystery of nature as well. The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica host a string of lakes with which Green (Chemistry/Miami Univ., Ohio) has become mesmerized. What are their origins, what do they have to say about the nature of weathering and mineral transport, and what about those strange temperature inversions? Chemistry is Green's passion, and it is not only the chemistry of the lake and laboratory that we get in spades, but a pleasurable poke through the history of the science as well: Dalton and Rutherford, Einstein and Bohr, and dozens more. These asides nicely clarify his arcane fieldwork. Shedding further light are finely honed flashes of pure science writing—his discourse on the physical behavior of water is handled with impressive dexterity, as are the explanations of conductivity units and Klemmerer readings (both important aspects of his lake studies). While it may be forgiven that such a sere, remote landscape conjures repeat visits to Green's family history, it is when Green gets mystical that he crashes through the thin ice of natura poetica. Readers are informed that ``the maple seed glides like a wooded blade in whispers from the parent tree,'' and that water ``punctuates waking and dream with longing.'' Say what? Such stuff is a squandering of Green's obvious narrative talents—his depiction of life at base camp is so grungily immediate, you can almost smell the body odor—and diminishes much of the pleasure this book otherwise has to offer. The clear south polar light, working its magic on Green's science writing, should have revealed to him that it was not his destiny to be bard of the crystal desert.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-58759-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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