num_pages: 296
description:  Last August two men in rural Georgia announced that they had killed Bigfoot. The claim drew instant feverish attention leading to more than 1000 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. 
language: English
title: Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend
publisher: University of Chicago Press