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Joshua Blu Buhs
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Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend Paperback – September 1, 2010

by Joshua Blu Buhs (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 22 ratings
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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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  1. Print length
    296 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of Chicago Press
  4. Publication date
    September 1, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0226079805
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0226079806
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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


“While Bigfoot researchers have grown weary of skeptical treatments of the topic, Joshua Buhs’s examination of the Sasquatch is refreshingly crisp and insightful, as opposed to demeaningly debunking. His grasp of the popular cultural significance of Bigfoot is outstanding and his overview of the legacy of these creatures is topnotch. Highly recommended.”


-- Loren Coleman, author of The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates

"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

“Thoroughly discredited hoaxes regarding seeing or shooting an actual Bigfoot notwithstanding, media interest in whether giant wild humanoids exist is readily re-ignitable. In 1962, Robert Hatfield struck the match when a ‘half-man, half-beast monster’ chased him into a cabin but ran off before Hatfield trained a gun on it. Good for Hatfield, maybe, since the gun wasn’t loaded, but fortuitous, anyway, for keeping the Bigfoot legend going, since once again there was no physical evidence of the fabled creature. Buhs undertakes the telling of ‘how the modern myth of Bigfoot emerged” and uses the terms Bigfoot, Yeti, Abominable Snowman, and Sasquatch more or less interchangeably throughout, since all refer to not-quite-human creatures living in the wild that are preternaturally elusive. 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. His conclusions seem well-founded but are highly unlikely to end debate.”

― Booklist


“The value of Buhs’s book is in its synthesizing of the many historical Bigfoot/Sasquatch stories into one readable narrative, and its summing-up of the state of Bigfoot research and belief today.”


-- H.J. Kirchhoff ― Globe and Mail

"Adroitly researched and well-documented. . . . Much more focused and thorough than G. Reece’s Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs and a very suitable cultural history complement to the anthropological focus of C. Daegling’s Bigfoot Exposed. Highly recommended.”--Choice

― Choice

"The stories are invatiably interesting, sometimes strange, often humorous and always entertaining. It's a good read, particularly if you've ever camped in a wilderness and wondered what lurks in the darkness just beyond the dying campfire light." -- Paul Fattig ― Mail Tribune

"[Bigfoot] is an oversized footprint of Americana, and a fun read. Bigfoot may not be stomping through the American wilderness, but his legend still lives in the forests of our imagination." -- Jason Weeks ― Sacramento Book Review

"Joshua Blu Buhs, listed in the back cover as 'an independent scholar' gets a two thumbs-up from me for doing something no author in Bigfooting history ever achieved: he published a rare picture of the late Betty Allen, someone who was prominent when things got afoot in northern California around 1958. The depth and level of scholarship of his work is impressive, no doubt, but 'believers' might be taken aback by the cover of the book...and also by Mr. Buhs prefatory remarks: 'I still don't think that Bigfoot exists...'" -- Daniel Perez ― Bigfoot Times

"Smart" and "Wide-ranging" ― BookForum

"This book is a must for every GCS member! ... Here, between the covers of one book, is all you ever wanted to know about Bigfoot - and about Sasquatch, the Abominable Snowman, the Yeti and the strange Wildman of the Woods - that perhaps roam uncharted forests......Bigfoot is guaranteed to become a classic." ― Ghost Club Journal

"Bigfoot's Andy Warhol moment occurred in 1967... For Buhs, more the cultural anthropologist..., Bigfoot surged due to a convergence of circumstances: It was a working-class male reaction against feminism and civil rights, a nostalgic return to a lost wilderness, a classic horror movie return-of-the-repressed with Mansonesque killer-hippie trappings." ― Guelph Mercury

"Author Joshua Blu Buhs is an 'independent scholar' and approaches Bigfoot the way a tenured scholar might. In 'Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend,' Buhs adds a 20-page bibliography that gives the book an air of academic legitimacy; he also uses more footnotes and citations than a David Foster Wallace fanboy." ― San Francisco Chronicle

"This book, by author Blu Buhs, is really well-written and well-done, and it tends to take the skeptical tack, of course, giving a history of some of the major players in the Bigfoot field and some behind-the-scenes information on each....I would most assuredly recommend this book." ― SSA Blog

"In his witty account, the American scholar ans sceptic Joshua Blu Buhs sets out in search of an animal variously claimed as America's only remaining ape, an extant Neanderthal, or an even older hominid such as Gigantophithecus.... In his postmodern attempt to pin down Bigfoot, Buhs's focus is on the hunters, rather than the hunted; this is not so much a book about Bigfoot as the belief in him." ― The Telegraph

"...likely to be the definitive history of the Bigfoot of the imagination for some considerable time, tracking the development of the myth, showing the various streams of the story: the theme of the Wildman in all human cultures; Yeti hunting in the Himalayas; Canadian Pacific tales of Sasquatch collected by John Burns; the modern fakelore of Bigfoot which rapidly went feral to become real folklore." ― John Rimmer's Magonia Blog

About the Author


Joshua Blu Buhs is the author of Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend and The Fire Ant Wars: Nature, Science, and Public Policy in Twentieth-Century America, both published by the University of Chicago Press.


Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press (September 1, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226079805
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226079806
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 22 ratings

About the author

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Joshua Blu Buhs

Joshua Blu Buhs

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I am a father, husband, and independent scholar living in Folsom California. I can be reached at joshuabbuhs_at_gmail_dot_com Book reviews on Goodreads.

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
22 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Steven Streufert
5.0 out of 5 stars A superb history of an often obscure and mythologized topic.
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2017
Verified Purchase
This is one of the top five Bigfoot books ever written, easily, if not the best. Even though it is a skeptical book, all believers should feel the challenge of reading it as well. No other writer on the legend of Bigfoot as a sociological and cultural phenomenon and a modern-day pursuit has done better in getting to the bottom of things and the real facts of many of the historical events of the field of interest. This book will anger some. Matt Moneymaker found a copy in my shop window and grabbed it out, saying I should burn it. Say what you will about his social thesis of the desire for "respect" driving the pursuit of Bigfoot or his apparently too easy dismissal of the possibility of Bigfoot's existence; but you'll be hard-pressed to find another author who actually got into all the old archives and found the original details of events and the people involved in them. All of his historical claims are well-established by cited sources, which is something one simply cannot say for all the other pro-belief Bigfoot books flooding the market. This one is built on solid foundations, and I would rank it right up there with the belief-supporting books by the likes of Christopher Murphy and John Green.

I did a lengthy interview and debate/discussion with the author on my blog which you should appreciate. Just look up "BIGFOOT'S bLOG: Interview and Discussion with JOSHUA BLU BUHS" on Google or whatever search engine you use and it should be at the top of the list.
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Sanjay R Singhal, RA
4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book, presenting a very different perspective
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2014
Verified Purchase
I've not finished reading this; however, I'm favourably impressed with the author's research and efforts to uncover as much information as he can on the topic. The author hoists himself on his own petard, by maintaining that Bigfoot is, in the end, non-existent, and fails to present both sides of the story, and allow the reader to decide. The author suggests that American sociological changes at the end of the 20th century are responsible for the advancement of the Bigfoot agenda, and while this may be, in some aspects, an accurate representation of the phenomenon, it should not be allowed to colour it so thoroughly and so monochromatically. All in all, a well-written, well-researched book, but failing, in the end, to convince.
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This big Hush
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2012
Brilliantly written and researched. Mr. Buhs has crafted THE final word on the legend surrounding Bigfoot. His most astute observation, expertly crafted, is how the rise of sasquatch "hunting/sightings" overlapped the disappearance of American machismo. Gone were the wild, untamed lands, gone were the industrial jobs, and in their place a legend of a hairy, brutish throwback lurking not in the dark forests but in the darker tangles of our minds.
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Bill
1.0 out of 5 stars I liked the cover
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2015
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I liked the cover. After that the book went down fast. Blu Buhs certainly doesn't come off as objective. Maybe that wasn't his intention. I think the subject matter deserves better.
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John M. Tredrea
2.0 out of 5 stars The Life and Times of a Legend Joshua Blu Buhs As someone who has followed the controversy over relict subhominids for the bette
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2016
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Bigfoot, The Life and Times of a Legend
Joshua Blu Buhs

As someone who has followed the controversy over relict subhominids for the better part of 70 years, I was intrigued by the appearance of this book under the prestigious authority of the University of Chicago Press. The U of C imprimatur made clear that this was going to be an attempt to once again debunk the possibility that homo sapiens might be sharing the planet with various collateral relatives, both close and not so close on the evolutionary chain. Not only did this not discourage me as someone who takes the subject very seriously, it positively intrigued me. Since first being exposed to the potential existence of what popular culture has named as Bigfoot, and what Grover Krantz has since labeled Gigantopithecus Krantzi, in a barber shop copy of the Ivan T. Sanderson coverage of the Jerry Crew incidents in True Magazine in, I believe, 1959, I have been hopefully awaiting a serious discussion of the phenomena critical on solid scientific grounds of the possibility that these creatures might actually be tromping around in various montane forests and swamplands in North America and across the Asian continent. By serious, I mean a discussion that deals honestly and with as much credibility with the available evidence as presentations by Bernard Heuvelmanns, Ivan T. Sanderson, Grover Krantz, and Jeff Meldrum and various other serious researchers trailing real academic credentials in their wake have done on the other side of the debate. I was disappointed.

What I found instead was a most excellent and fascinating summary of the entire history of what Ivan T. Sanderson labeled ABSMry before his sadly premature death in his early sixties from brain cancer. Every player of any degree of importance in the field, both academic and amateur, supportive or hostile, is there and every major and minor event is covered. In addition, if the reader desires a bibliography worthy of notice, it is here to be found. If the reader, however, is looking for an honest and fair minded exploration of the contributions and noncontributions of the various major actors in the American side of the story, he will be disappointed.

What Joshua Blu Buhs gives us instead is a lively, but very prejudicial romp through the history of American ABSMry, filled with good guys (invariably Bigfoot skeptics and debunkers) and bad guys (filled with a remarkable grab bag of self-promoting charlatans and more than a few serious researchers who deserve better than they get in the covers of this book). I found very little of what I would consider acceptable discussion of the hard core evidence relating to the existence most particularly of North American relatives of the Asian Gigantopithecus and a great deal of character assassination of a sort that old Joe McCarthy would have approved. Blu Buhs uses the classic technique of the determined professional debunker of gathering and presenting the most egregious products of hucksterism and at the same time avoiding material supportive to the other side of the debate. It is the 21st century equivalent of ridiculing the vast field of UFOlogy by presenting the claims of George Adamski as the “answer” to the debate of whether this planet is being visited by alien intelligences in possession of advanced technology—and it stinks to high heavens in my mind.

The most egregious example of the Blu Buhs’ approach can be found in his discussion of the career and contribution of Ivan T. Sanderson. Sanderson was a remarkable combination of serious scientist and dabbler in what he himself labeled as Forteana after Charles Fort, the turn of the century writer on phenomena that transcended the acceptable limits of scientific orthodoxy. Sanderson’s attitude on the subject of phenomena transcending the acceptable paradigms of orthodoxy was that it had to be seriously looked at, discussed, and accepted as being beyond resolution using the tools of contemporary science. He was, at the same time, a fearless defender of reports presented by nonscientifically trained observers and reserved his heaviest contempt for formally trained scientists who dismissed the outré because it was being reported by the hoi polloi of the world.

How does Blu Buhs deal with Sanderson’s contribution to the subject? In two ways.
The first is by presenting a highly colored version of his various personal interactions with his scientific peers during the course of his life. Sanderson, with his British Eton background was a master at debate and sarcastic put downs of smug and pompous and self important authority figures. It would be unfair to put Joshua Blu Buhs on the level of some of Ivan Sanderson’s most egregiously silly targets, but one suspects that much, if not all, of Blu Buhs’ material would be quickly set in more proper perspective if the good Scotsman were around to balance the books.

The second way that Blu Buhs attempts to dispose of Sanderson is by focusing on his extensive career as a Fortean dabbling in various really weird and, in this writers’ perspective, bizarre and improbable phenomena and to use the logically untenable technique of saying that, because some of Sanderson’s dabblings (like UFOs) were stuff and nonsense (in Blu Buhs’ opinion) this discredits Sanderson’s writings on relict subhominids and various other undocumented specimens of cryptozoology. Having been exposed to the writings of what I consider to have been the two Ivans, it is this reviewer’s opinion that Ivan kept the two subjects nicely segregated in his mind and in his published work. Being willing to report and to speculate on the inexplicable is not a crime, although it is apparently in Joshua’s tidyand antiseptic intellectual universe. What is particularly irksome is Blu Buhs’ complete refusal to recognize the truly fundamental intellectual contribution that Ivan T. Sanderson made to the field of ABSMry by placing the distribution of subhominids in the ecologically sound stretch of montane forests stretching broken only by the Bering Strait from the Himalayas and the Urals of Asia through the coastal ranges of Canada and the United States in his magnum opus, Abominable Snowman, Legend Brought to Life. Instead, the book is ridiculed on various grounds, all open to counterattack.

While I am very critical of what I consider the dark side of this book, there is a sort of a book within a book here that would have been worth considering if Joshua Blu Buhs had been able to refrain from using questionable techniques of presentation and argument to discredit a subject that I take very seriously. That would be the approach that he began the book with and that is to put the popularity of the Bigfoot phenomena in a useful cultural perspective. Here, I believe, that Joshua Blu Buhs is on very solid grounds and I will quote here from what may well be the most concise summation of his paradigm: “Bigfoot was the perfect embodiment of this notion of true—probably just an invention but still seemingly authentic as gritty as a cowboy, self-reliant, living on its own terms, far from the corrupting influences of a feminized and weak society”. As a sort of pop culture reaction to the artificiality of 20th and 21st century consumer based society, the popularity of Bigfoot is exactly that. This is reflected most obviously by the popularity of the endlessly unsuccessful travelogue TV series “Searching for Bigfoot” with its four down home unpretentious searchers wandering from one small rural working class community to another listening sympathetically to an endless series of reported sightings and then stumbling around various woodlands but never quite “finding” their quarry. The only problem here is that the fact that relict populations of hairy subhominids may be still in existence in the real world is irrelevant to their “sex appeal” and that is where this author and this book have gone most spectacularly astray.
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Top reviews from other countries

Duncan Norris
5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book about Bigfoot that isn't About Bigfoot
Reviewed in Australia on April 10, 2022
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To the most important aspect first: this is a well-researched, well-presented, and eminently readable book about the history of the Bigfoot phenomena, the sighting, evidences, mythology, personalities, controversies etc. It is not about Bigfoot the creature or if he is real or not. As such it is an interesting topic on its own and is this aspect appeals to you I recommend this work.

I noticed all of the other reviews were by folk who are obviously more deeply invested in Bigfoot in a variety of ways, which of course makes complete sense. I however am not-I was just interested in the history of a modern mythology, and as such I found Bigfoot: Life and Times of Legend a factual and enjoyable read. Recommenced.
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marboleon
2.0 out of 5 stars More of a cultural / sociological account than one of Bigfoot itself
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 30, 2024
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Being someone who has long been interested in the subject as a sceptic, I wanted a book which examined the evidence for and against the existence of Bigfoot/Sasquatch. Instead, this treats the subject largely as a cultural phenomenon, setting the various phases of interest in Bigfoot against the sociological and cultural backdrop of the various periods. Whilst interesting to a degree, at times it read like a sociology PhD thesis which is advancing a rather subjective narrative.

The other main component of the book is a treatment of the main players in the study of Bigfoot, most of whom I had come across before. I will admit that it was interesting to see their characters and backstories fleshed out, but there was very little on the substantive evidence for and against Bigfoot itself. I am strongly inclined not to believe in the existence of such creatures, and my main interest is in how there come to be so many first hand accounts of encounters. Is it a question of dishonesty or delusion for instance? I also wanted a methodical treatment and balanced weighing of the evidence, but none of this is to be found in the book.
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