What I was hoping for based on the subtitle was an examination of the role cryptids and monster stories play within American culture and the histories of how some of our more famous legends formed. What I got was a series of journal entries retelling “eyewitness accounts” of various—albeit a very large sample size—unknown or unidentifiable creatures. I did like dives into Native American folklore and the similarities to modern day cryptids, but they are few and far between. What had the potential to scratch the “logical, skeptical, but still curious” side of my brain turned into nothing more than a speedrun of every episode of Monster Quest or Finding Bigfoot