Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226079790)

Last August, two men in rural Georgia announced that they had killed Bigfoot. The claim drew instant, feverish attention, leading to more than 1,000 news stories worldwide--despite the fact that nearly everyone knew it was a hoax. Though Bigfoot may not exist, there's no denying Bigfoot mania.

With Bigfoot, Joshua Blu Buhs traces the wild and wooly story of America's favorite homegrown monster. He begins with nineteenth-century accounts of wildmen roaming the forests of America, treks to the Himalayas to reckon with the Abominable Snowman, then takes us to northern California in 1958, when reports of a hairy hominid loping through remote woodlands marked Bigfoot's emergence as a modern marvel. Buhs delves deeply into the trove of lore and misinformation that has sprung up around Bigfoot in the ensuing half century. We meet charlatans, pseudo-scientists, and dedicated hunters of the beast--and with Buhs as our guide, the focus is always less on evaluating their claims than on understanding why Bigfoot has inspired all this drama and devotion in the first place. What does our fascination with this monster say about our modern relationship to wilderness, individuality, class, consumerism, and the media?

Writing with a scientist's skepticism but an enthusiast's deep engagement, Buhs invests the story of Bigfoot with the detail and power of a novel, offering the definitive take on this elusive beast.

Author: Joshua Blu Buhs
ISBN-10: 0226079791
ISBN-13: 9780226079790
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 05/01/2009
Pages: 296
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/02/2009 pg. 53
Library Journal 03/01/2009 pg. 90
Booklist 04/15/2009 pg. 6
Chronicle of Higher Education 04/24/2008 pg. 18
New York Times Book Review 06/07/2009 pg. 19
Choice 10/01/2009