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.