Academic Press Meets Bigfoot

Two forthcoming books on Bigfoot are being published by University of Chicago Press and University of California Press.

Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend
Joshua Blu Buhs
May 2009
University of Chicago Press

Preface

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 Zadig’s 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
“Occam’s 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 True’s Trouble with Truth, and Ivan Sanderson’s

6 Melting the Snowman: 1961–1967
Melting the Snowman
Sanderson’s 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 Wasn’t
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
Index

Anatomy of a Beast: Obsession and Myth on the Trail of Bigfoot
Michael McLeod
April 2009
University of California Press

"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 thinking—and how obsession and myth are created out of it."