Kirk Wallace Johnson's Books

The Feather Thief

Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson

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The Feather Thief

Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson

As heard on NPR's This American Life “Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor From the author of The Fishermen and the Dragon, a rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.

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338

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Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101981636

ISBN 13

9781101981634

The Fishermen and the Dragon

Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson

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The Fishermen and the Dragon

Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson

A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster—a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman’s relentless battle for environmental justice. By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. After a white crabber was killed by a young Vietnamese refugee in self-defense, the situation became a tinderbox primed to explode, and the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan saw an opportunity to stoke the fishermen’s rage and prejudices. At a massive Klan rally near Galveston Bay one night in 1981, he strode over to an old boat graffitied with the words U.S.S. VIET CONG, torch in hand, and issued a ninety-day deadline for the refugees to leave or else “it’s going to be a helluva lot more violent than Vietnam!” The white fishermen roared as the boat burned, convinced that if they could drive these newcomers from the coast, everything would return to normal. A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, including FBI and ATF records, unprecedented access to case files, and scores of firsthand interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. This explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays—and who now represents the fishermen’s last hope.

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385

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1984880136

ISBN 13

9781984880130

The Fishermen and the Dragon

Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson

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The Fishermen and the Dragon

Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson

New York Public Library Best of 2022 A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster—a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman’s relentless battle for environmental justice. “Riveting…it has a little of everything that a thrilling story needs. It feels quite prescient, as if something we’re living out now, you can see scenes of it then. A gripping book that deserves a wide readership.”--George Packer, author of The Unwinding By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. After a white crabber was killed by a young Vietnamese refugee in self-defense, the situation became a tinderbox primed to explode, and the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan saw an opportunity to stoke the fishermen’s rage and prejudices. At a massive Klan rally near Galveston Bay one night in 1981, he strode over to an old boat graffitied with the words U.S.S. VIET CONG, torch in hand, and issued a ninety-day deadline for the refugees to leave or else “it’s going to be a helluva lot more violent than Vietnam!” The white fishermen roared as the boat burned, convinced that if they could drive these newcomers from the coast, everything would return to normal. A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, including FBI and ATF records, unprecedented access to case files, and scores of firsthand interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. This explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays—and who now represents the fishermen’s last hope.

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385

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1984880128

ISBN 13

9781984880123

The Feather Thief

Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson

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The Feather Thief

Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson

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Page Count

338

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Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101981636

ISBN 13

9781101981634

Martin Luther King Jr.

By: John A. Kirk

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Martin Luther King Jr.

By: John A. Kirk

Combining the latest insights from KIng biographies and movement histories, this book provides an up-to-date critical analysis of the relationship between King and the wider civil rights movement. Delivering a fresh perspective on the relationship between 'the man and the movement', Kirk argues that it is the interactionbetween national and local movement concerns that is essential to understanding King's leadership and black activism in the 1950s and 1960s. Kirk examines King's strengths and his limitations, and weighs the role that king played in then movement alongside the contributions of other civil rights organizations and leaders, and local civil rights activists. Suitable for undergraduate courses in 20th century US history.

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Page Count

245

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317876504

ISBN 13

9781317876502

To Be a Friend Is Fatal

The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind

By: Kirk W. Johnson

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To Be a Friend Is Fatal

The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind

By: Kirk W. Johnson

The “searing” (The New Yorker), “must read” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) memoir of “one of the few genuine heroes of America’s war in Iraq” (Dexter Filkins). In January 2005 Kirk Johnson, then twenty-four, arrived in Baghdad as USAID’s (US Agency for International Development) only Arabic-speaking American employee. Despite his opposition to the war, Johnson felt called to civic duty and wanted to help rebuild Iraq. Working as the USAID’s first reconstruction coordinator in Fallujah, he traversed the city’s IED-strewn streets, working alongside idealistic Iraqi translators—young men and women sick of Saddam, filled with Hollywood slang, and enchanted by the idea of a peaceful, democratic Iraq. It was not to be. As sectarian violence escalated, Iraqis employed by the US coalition found themselves subject to a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination. On his first brief vacation, Johnson, swept into what doctors later described as a “fugue state,” crawled onto the ledge outside his hotel window and plunged off. He would spend the next year in an abyss of depression, surgery, and PTSD—crushed by having failed in Iraq. One day, Johnson received an email from an Iraqi friend, Yaghdan: People are trying to kill me and I need your help. That email launched Johnson’s now seven-year mission to get help from the US government for Yaghdan and thousands of abandoned Iraqis like him. To Be a Friend Is Fatal is Kirk W. Johnson’s “truly incredible” (Ira Glass) portrait of the human rubble of war and his efforts to redeem a shameful chapter of American history. “It is difficult to imagine a book more urgent than this” (The Boston Globe).

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Page Count

368

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

147671049X

ISBN 13

9781476710495

What Can We Do about Church Dropouts?

By: C. Kirk Hadaway

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What Can We Do about Church Dropouts?

By: C. Kirk Hadaway

Describes reasons for dropouts and offers specific programs to prevent dropouts through innovative and traditional approaches to ministry. An in-depth study of persons who have drifted away, fled, or been "pushed out" of hte church. Hadaway arranges church dropouts into distinct categores such as Estranged Mentals Members, Young Settled Liberals, Young Libertarians, and Irreligious Traditionalists. After describing each one's characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors, Hadaway shows how to reach the members of each group through innovative and traditional approaches.

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Page Count

140

Published Date

ISBN 10

0687446058

ISBN 13

9780687446056

Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, Diuretics to Emulsions

By: Kirk-Othmer

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Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, Diuretics to Emulsions

By: Kirk-Othmer

Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology The Third Edition of the Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology is built on the solid foundation of the previous editions. All of the articles have been rewritten and updated and many new subjects have been added to reflect changes in chemical technology through the 1970s. The new edition, however, will be familiar to users of the earlier editions: comprehensive, authoritative, accessible, lucid. The Encyclopedia remains an indispensable information source for all producers and users of chemical products and materials. In the Third Edition, emphasis is given to major present-day topics of concern to all chemists, scientists, and engineers—energy, health, safety, toxicology, and new materials. New subjects have been added, especially those related to polymer and plastics technology, fuels and energy, inorganic and solid-state chemistry, composite materials, coating, fermentation and enzymes, pharmaceuticals, surfactant technology, fibers and textiles. New features include the use of SI units as well as English units, Chemical Abstracts Service’s Registry Numbers, and complete indexing based on automated retrieval from a machine-readable composition system. Once again this classic serves as an unrivaled library of information for the chemical and allied industries. Some comments about Kirk-Othmer— The First Edition "No reference library worthy of the name will be without this series. It is simply a must for the chemist and chemical engineer…" —Chemical and Engineering News The Second Edition "A necessity for any technical library." —Choice

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Page Count

960

Publisher

Wiley-Interscience

Published Date

ISBN 10

0471020443

ISBN 13

9780471020448

Book's by Kirk Wallace Johnson

The Feather Thief

The Feather Thief

The Fishermen and the Dragon

The Fishermen and the Dragon

The Fishermen and the Dragon

The Fishermen and the Dragon

The Feather Thief

The Feather Thief

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

To Be a Friend Is Fatal

To Be a Friend Is Fatal

What Can We Do about Church Dropouts?

What Can We Do about Church Dropouts?

Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, Diuretics to Emulsions

Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, Diuretics to Emulsions

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