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Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legendby Joshua Blu Buhs
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher 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) Review:"The mistaken assumption of past Bigfoot investigation is that the phenomenon is best understood from the perspective of natural history. Joshua Blu Buhs has written an original and engaging book that tells us the meaning of the hairy beast that won't go away yet we cannot seem to find. Bigfoot is the definitive history of the legend's social and cultural context, and it offers an explanation for the phenomenon that will be pondered and discussed for years to come."-David Daegling, author of Bigfoot Exposed Review:"Buhs is at his amused best when following the exploits of Bigfoots human handlers--the colorful band of true believers, hoaxers and pseudo-documentarists who constructed this greatest of all shaggy-hominid stories."--Publishers Weekly About the AuthorJoshua Blu Buhs is an independent scholar and the author of The Fire Ant Wars, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Table of ContentsPreface
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 What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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