Book Review: Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life by Ivan T. Sanderson

Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life by Ivan T. Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Leaning on his training in botany and zoology, Ivan T. Sanderson examined the reports and data available on the topic of abominable snowmen from around the world in the early 1960s and later in that decade and the result is one of the classics of cryptozoology and sasquatch literature. Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life examines reports of unknown hominoids on five continents and if there is anything to them.

Sanderson begins by chronicling how the Abominable Snowman got its name in popular culture in 1921 then explored of reports of incidents and sightings in the Himalayas before that. Then over much of the book Sanderson covers vast stretches of the globe in which similar hominoid reports and stories are told before concluding that there were four man-like species with humans on the planet as of his writing. The rest of the book covered various geographical and biological elements that Sanderson believed helped explain why reports that he covered happened where they did. While the reports, stories, and local folklore were invaluable and Sanderson’s explanation of physical characteristics of the earth were insightful, there were several issues that made this book a tad painful to read. The first issue was Sanderson’s sometimes over-the-top snark filled comments on everything from both sides of the cold war being idiots to the sensationists in the press, but the biggest target and frankly where it got the past the point of “I get it, move on” was on scientists who professed skepticism of things in the outside world while they kept their pasty white butts in their comfy offices—if he had just put all of that in one chapter of his book it would have been more impactful but he just kept on with it. The second was Sanderson’s terminology for different types of humans—actual homo sapiens—that honestly today wouldn’t be allowed but some of the stuff he used was nearly crossing the line even in the 1960s. Another thing that isn’t a critique but is something that must be stated is the scientific names of early human ancestors used in the book, which a lot are not used today because they’ve changed a lot with various discoveries by paleoanthropologists in the 60+ years since the book was first published.

Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life is a look at worldwide reports of what today would be called relic hominins, it’s one of cryptozoology’s most famous books by one of the field’s founders, Ivan T. Sanderson.

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