Book Description: The definitive word on the subject from the dean of urban legend studies.
We all know those stories that are too bizarre to be true—roasted babies, vanishing hitchhikers, scuba divers in trees—but have you heard about the ice man or the bullet baby? This comprehensive and compellingly readable reference work will answer all your urban legend questions, offering alphabetical entries on every aspect of the subject, including descriptions of hundreds of individual legends and their variations, legend themes, and scholarly approaches to the genre. Other entries discuss the relationship of urban legends to literature, film, comic books, music, and many other areas of popular culture. A Booklist Editors' Choice 2001 Reference Book. 60 b/w illustrations.
Important source material A wonderful record of fascinating true stories, window-dressed as a collection of fictitious modern folklore. Great entertaining light reading, BUT, more importantly, is THE source for the skinny on what's really going on behind the mainstream headlines.
I have shelved it in my personal library between The New York City Public Library Desk Reference Manual, and Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.
This is currently published only in an oversized softcover format. The author has done a wonderful job of assembling and retelling hundreds of important and entertaining stories . . . and pretending that they are fabrications, even providing "origins". Bravo!
Great referance work ! This is the ultimate book on Urban Legends and Jan Harold Brunvand is a mastermind on Urban Legends, I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in folklore and Mythology. Awesome Book !!!
The urban legends you already know and many more new ones It is ironic that Jan Harold Brunvand put together his "Encyclopedia of Urban Legends" because it was the ultimate reference work on the subject consulted in the 1998 film "Urban Legend," although there was no such book. So this is the real-life counterpart to the fictional Hollywood volume and if you do not recognize dozens of the examples that are arranged alphabetically from A ("The Accidental Cannibals") to Z ("The Zoo Section"), then you simply have not been swapping tale but supposedly true tales with your best buds.
If you remember the point in your cognitive development where you discovered that a true tale and a tale that is not true sound pretty much the same, then you can understand the power of your standard urban legend. The one that goes farthest back in my own mental file cabinet would be "The Kentucky Fried Rat," which was told with regards to a particular fast food restaurant in Albuquerque when I was in high school. Of course, some of these go way back, such as "The Bullet Baby," the one set in the Civil War where a bullet goes through the scrotum of a Union soldier and lodges in the reproductive tract of a young woman who gives birth to a healthy baby nine months later. That hoax was first published in an 1874 medical journal. You can see the basic principle involved, in terms of taking things that "could" be true, even if it requires a hefty grain of salt, and spinning a tale. I can imagine somebody trying to come up with alternative methods of accomplishing a virgin birth and throwing out this whopper.
Brunvand, a professor emeritus at the University of Utah, has written several books on the subject of urban legends, such as "Too Good to Be True," "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," and "Curses! Broiled Again!" In this collection he is interested in looking at these urban legends as examples of modern folk narrative. There are hundreds of individual urban legends included here, along with their variations, and most entries are cross-referenced and include bibliographical citations. Whenever possible he traces the evolution of particular legends and their connections to other fields including film, literature, comic books, music, etc. He also points out how the Internet has speeded up the dissemination of urban legends to an extent never before imagined.
There are even some entries that explain how to collect, classify, and analyze texts and performances for those who want to research the subject further. Throughout the book what Brunvand calls "legend themes" are explored and he often touches on the scholarly approaches to the genre. But for most readers the fun is going to be finding out where some of the stories they have heard about or even believed in the past really came from. In my defense I want to point out that I really did not care if the story about the "Neiman Marcus Cookies" was true; I really liked the recipe because these are super rich cookies and you can only eat one at a time, which, for me, would be a good thing.
Very Insightful & Informative I decided to pick up this book because I have always had a mild interest in urban legends. This book is well organized from A-Z. It contains several hundred urban legends within the pages. I was quite surprised about how several different urban legends blend together.
The author dictates when the legend started and where it began. If you have any interest in urban legends then I would recommend this book. I was suprised at how many urban legends are documented and told.
A good reference If you're interested in urban legends from a folklore standpoint, a research standpoint, or just a fan then you will appreciate this book. It is the most complete reference I have seen. Details of stories, their comparison with other stories, common stories from other parts of the world, and clear explanations. Brunvand has a knack for making it all understandable and avoids being dry and lecturing. For the stories themselves you would want to see his many other collections; for research and reference you can not do without this book.
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