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Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend

by Joshua Blu Buhs

Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend Cover

 

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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 worldwidedespite the fact that nearly everyone knew it was a hoax. Though Bigfoot may not exist, theres no denying Bigfoot mania.

With Bigfoot, Joshua Blu Buhs traces the wild and wooly story of Americas 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 Bigfoots 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 beastand 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 scientists skepticism but an enthusiasts deep engagement, Buhs invests the story of Bigfoot with the detail and power of a novel, offering the definitive take on this elusive beast.

Review:

"This sprightly, if sometimes overblown, study finds the elusive hairy wildman of the Pacific Northwest lurking everywhere. Independent scholar Buhs (The Fire Ant Wars) skeptically but affectionately surveys the evidentiary traces of bigfoot and his yeti and Sasquatch kin in sightings, tracks, sideshow exhibits and film, but his focus is on the megapod as cultural signifier. To the white working-class men who are his biggest fans, Buhs contends, bigfoot is an icon of untamed masculinity, a populist rebel against scientific elites, the last champion of authentic reality against a plastic, image-driven, effeminate consumer society. (Ironically, Buhs notes, bigfoot's career as advertising mascot and tabloid teaser also makes him a touchstone of consumerism.) Buhs's rote application of race-class-gender theory — 'By imagining themselves into the body of Sasquatch, white working-class men could imagine themselves as black, as women, could come in contact with... repressed and forbidden desires' — yields more academic cant than insight; his oft-invoked white proles feel almost as legendary and stereotyped as the creature itself. Buhs is at his amused best when following the exploits of bigfoot's human handlers — the colorful band of true believers, hoaxers and pseudo-documentarists who constructed this greatest of all shaggy-hominid stories. 35 b&w photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

That truth is not required to make a splash in the media might be a new wrinkle in our political discourse, but it's old hat in the realm of urban legends. Take the uproar over Bigfoot — aka Sasquatch, Yeti, the Abominable Snowman — the hulking hairy hominoid who supposedly haunts the damp, scratchy forests of the American Northwest and the snowfields of the Himalayas. Even though no Bigfoot has... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)

About the Author

Joshua Blu Buhs is an independent scholar and the author of The Fire Ant Wars, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Preface

Dramatis Personae

 

1 Wildmen

            Wildmen through History

            What-Is-It

            The Abominable Snowman

            The Life and Times of Bigfoot

2 Yeti: 1951–1959

            Sensation

            The Yeti, Science, and Zadigs Method

            Britain Hunts the Yeti

            America Hunts the Yeti

            What the Evidence Told

3 Sasquatch: 1929–1958

            The Great Sasquatch Hunt

            The Kidnapping of Albert Ostman

            “Occams Razor Cuts on the Side of the Sasquatch”

            Slick Eyes the Sasquatch

4 Big Foot: 1958

            The Folkloric Origins of Bigfoot

            Big Foot Makes the Papers

            The Confirmed and Converted Confront Bigfoot

            Humbug!

            “Maybe Bigfoot is Lost Relative of Old ‘Sasquatch”

5 ABSMery: 1959–1961

            The (Weird, Wacky) Wonderful World of Ivan T. Sanderson

            ABSMery

            The Pacific Northwest Expedition

            Enter Peter Byrne

            The Wipe: Or Trues Trouble with Truth, and Ivan Sandersons

6 Melting the Snowman: 1961–1967

            Melting the Snowman

            Sandersons Failed Debunking of the Debunking

            The Quiet Years

            Big Foot Daze

7 The Return of Bigfoot: 1967–1980

            Bigfoot Filmed!

            Making Sense of the Movie

            The Return of Bigfoot

            Bozo, the Minnesota Iceman

            Bigfoot on Tour

            The Secret of Sasquatch

8 A Contest for Dignity: 1969–1977

            The Bigfoot Community

            Cripplefoot

            The Center that Wasnt

            Hoaxing, the Unconquerable Problem

            The Laugher Curtain

9 Cryptozoology: 1978–1990

            Grover Krantz, Sasquatch Scientist

            Anthropology of the Unknown

            Cryptozoology

            Science Police

            “Definitive Proof”

            Arrested by the Science Police

10 The Death of Bigfoot? 1980–2002

            The Green Man

            The Death of Bigfoot

            “The Most Abominable Hoaxer”

            Bigfoot is Dead! Long Live Bigfoot!

            Not The End, but An End

            Curse of the Sasquatch

 

Bibliography

            Archival Collections

            Select Bibliography

Index

Product Details

ISBN:
9780226079790
Author:
Buhs, Joshua Blu
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Subject:
General
Subject:
Unexplained Phenomena
Subject:
United States - 20th Century
Subject:
General science
Subject:
Controversial Knowledge
Subject:
Sasquatch
Subject:
Metaphysics-Speculative History
Subject:
Mythology-General
Copyright:
Edition Description:
Hardcover
Publication Date:
20090531
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
279
Dimensions:
9.00 x 6.00 in

Related Aisles

Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend New Hardcover
0 stars - 0 reviews
$29.00 In Stock
Product details 279 pages University of Chicago Press - English 9780226079790 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "This sprightly, if sometimes overblown, study finds the elusive hairy wildman of the Pacific Northwest lurking everywhere. Independent scholar Buhs (The Fire Ant Wars) skeptically but affectionately surveys the evidentiary traces of bigfoot and his yeti and Sasquatch kin in sightings, tracks, sideshow exhibits and film, but his focus is on the megapod as cultural signifier. To the white working-class men who are his biggest fans, Buhs contends, bigfoot is an icon of untamed masculinity, a populist rebel against scientific elites, the last champion of authentic reality against a plastic, image-driven, effeminate consumer society. (Ironically, Buhs notes, bigfoot's career as advertising mascot and tabloid teaser also makes him a touchstone of consumerism.) Buhs's rote application of race-class-gender theory — 'By imagining themselves into the body of Sasquatch, white working-class men could imagine themselves as black, as women, could come in contact with... repressed and forbidden desires' — yields more academic cant than insight; his oft-invoked white proles feel almost as legendary and stereotyped as the creature itself. Buhs is at his amused best when following the exploits of bigfoot's human handlers — the colorful band of true believers, hoaxers and pseudo-documentarists who constructed this greatest of all shaggy-hominid stories. 35 b&w photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
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