Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend

2004, Best Skeptical Book, The Cryptozoologist

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	List Price: $80.00   Cloth 0-7591-0538-3 / 978-0-7591-0538-6   2004 288pp List Price: $27.95   Paper 0-7591-0539-1 / 978-0-7591-0539-3   2004 288pp European customers click here

"Bigfoot, aka the Sasquatch, gets no respect, especially from scientists. So complained the creature's advocates, and anthropologist David J. Daegling agreed with them. In writing Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologists Examines America's Enduring Legend, he drew upon not only his own specialty but also, with the help of friends, the physics of human movement. The latter was helpful in analyzing such traces of the creature as casts of its footprints and a film in which it is allegedly seen walking in its Nortwest U.S. habitat. Daegling's conclusion is straightforward: 'The absence of physical remains—bodies or parts thereof—is to my mind the most devastating argument against the Sasquatch.' One point made much of by Bigfoot enthusiasts is the sheer number of reported sightings that paint a relatively consistent portrait of the creature. It would be preposterous, they contend, to think that so many people could have entered into a kind of conspiracy to plant so much similar evidence. Daegling rejoins that this mode of argument sets up 'a rhetorical trick known as the false dilemma.' It hardly takes conspiring to produce a consistent profile of a Bigfoot. 'If potential hoaxers can read a newspaper or operate a television remote,' the author writes, 'they have the ability to acquire descriptions of Bigfoot evidence and recreat that evidence in short order.'

"— The Washington Post
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The myth of Bigfoot has captured the popular imagination since the creature's first public debut in 1958--numerous citations of "evidence," newspaper articles, books, hysterical personal accounts, and even Hollywood movies illustrate the American public's enduring romance with the Sasquatch. The scientific community on the whole, however, has stubbornly refused to comment on what it views as a very tall tale, though Bigfoot's existence continues to be hotly argued between proponents of the beast and its skeptics. Now, biological anthropologist and primate physiology specialist David J. Daegling enters the fray to offer both sides of the dispute benefit of objective scientific study. A well-crafted read, Bigfoot Exposed will prove to be as much a model of scientific method for anthropologists and researchers as it is an engaging and persuasive debunking of the myth of Bigfoot.

About the Author
David J. Daegling, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, is a biological anthropologist specializing in the study of primate anatomy and biomechanics.

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