I Read a Book: Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend

Joshua Blu Buhs's near-definitive Bigfoot tracks the elusive beast from his primordial genesis as the mythological "wildman" of disparate cultures throughout history to the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, to the Sasquatch of British Columbia, to the critter captured in the indelible Patterson film, to the commercial pitchmonster of today.

Like me, Buhs is a skeptic who still asserts that Bigfoot is real, if only in the forests of the collective mind. He covers the faithful, the naysayers, the cryptozoologists, the hoaxers, the scientists, the pseudoscientists, and particularly the "white, working-class men" who've given life to Bigfoot over the decades, making him a postwar media sensation. While it's a tad too academic for my tastes (and not pop-culture-y enough -- where's Quatchi?), it's still the best Bigfoot book I've read. It also made me slightly jealous.

Two snaps up!