Our monthly book club is for anyone who loves a good story, curious creatures, and the wild places that make the Georgia coast special. Each month, we’ll highlight a fun, thought-provoking book about wildlife, nature, conservation, or the environment that one of our staff have read or is currently reading. Plus we’ll add in a few questions and ideas to help you take the conversation outside!
September — The Feather Thief
by Kirk Wallace Johnson
A young musician breaks into a British natural-history museum and steals hundreds of rare bird specimens—not for science, but for the bizarre and obsessive world of Victorian salmon-fly tying. Johnson follows the crime into the underground world of feather collectors and fly tiers, while exploring how our fascination with beautiful things can become destructive. It is part true crime, part ornithology, part adventure story.
Questions to think about:
- When does appreciating nature cross the line into exploiting it?
- Why do humans become so obsessed with collecting things from the natural world?
- The stolen specimens later had scientific value. What makes a museum specimen valuable even after the animal is gone?
- Would the story have happened differently if the feathers weren’t so beautiful?
