Overview

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.

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9780226079806

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Reviews

Devotees of Sasquatchiana won't be disappointed. - New York Times Book Review 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. - Publishers Weekly The value of Buhs's book is in its synthesizing of the many historical Bigfoot/Sasquatch stories into one readable narrative... summing-up of the state of Bigfoot research and belief today. - Globe and Mail Proceeding era by era and place by place, Buhs evaluates the stories of encounters with the giant creatures, deconstructs hoaxes, and evaluates genuine studies in service of tracking down the truth. - Booklist Buhs traces the journey between these perceptions of elusive wild men and discovers a story of twentieth-century shifts in American culture and class. Bigfoot was both a product of the postwar ascendance of mass culture and a reaction to it, capturing the imagination of those who longed to 'touch the really real behind the false front of consumer goods and scientific arrogance.' - New Yorker

"""Devotees of Sasquatchiana won't be disappointed."" - New York Times Book Review ""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."" - Publishers Weekly ""The value of Buhs's book is in its synthesizing of the many historical Bigfoot/Sasquatch stories into one readable narrative... summing-up of the state of Bigfoot research and belief today."" - Globe and Mail ""Proceeding era by era and place by place, Buhs evaluates the stories of encounters with the giant creatures, deconstructs hoaxes, and evaluates genuine studies in service of tracking down the truth."" - Booklist ""Buhs traces the journey between these perceptions of elusive wild men and discovers a story of twentieth-century shifts in American culture and class. Bigfoot was both a product of the postwar ascendance of mass culture and a reaction to it, capturing the imagination of those who longed to 'touch the really real behind the false front of consumer goods and scientific arrogance.'"" - New Yorker"""

Author Information

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

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