num_pages: 238
description: Part history part road trip and part biography this is the true story of a remarkable group of men whose obsession with Bigfoot turned the giant hominid into an American icon. Award-winning journalist Michael McLeod tells of Bigfoot's rise to tabloid stardom in a fast-paced account that begins with his own journey to investigate a famous 1967 film clip of a Bigfoot in a California forest. McLeod proceeds to uncover a trail of clues reaching from the late nineteenth century when a few ambitious imaginative naturalists and explorers synthesized historical and indigenous folklore with Darwinian ideas and speculated that a proto-hominid missing link might still be alive in remote areas. That speculation would eventually inspire a colorful cast of loggers hunters con artists and businessmen in the twentieth century to create the modern myth of Bigfoot all of them angling for a piece of a monster that the media and the public still can't get enough of. Told through vividly narrated interviews and anecdotes Anatomy of a Beast offers a unique perspective on the deep roots of counterfactual thinkingand how obsession and myth are created out of it.
language: English
title: Anatomy of a Beast: Obsession and Myth on the Trail of Bigfoot
publisher: University of California Press