If you just can't get enough Joe Knowles . . .

Hi everybody,
Just in case you haven't gotten enough Joseph Knowles this week, here are two items.

First, a glorious Joe Knowles beefcake shot (above) from Knowles's book, Alone in the Wilderness. Suitable for framing!

And second, a book about Joe Knowles has just been published--as in published four days ago! You are among the first to hear about this publishing landmark. Naked in the Woods: Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of Frontier Fakery, by Jim Motavilli, tells the story of our hero and places him in broader cultural context. Here's the blurb from amazon.com:

One hundred years ago, Joseph Knowles staged America's first Survivor-like "reality shows"--questionable adventures in the wild, fueled by tabloid wars and wilderness hysteria. Joseph Knowles was a forty-five-year-old part-time painter, ex-Navy man, friend of the Sioux, and onetime hunting guide who stepped--nearly naked--into the woods to live off the land and his own devices. From 1913 to 1916, Knowles's dispatches to the world--alternating accounts of bear clubbing and quiet contemplation, written in charcoal on pieces of birch bark--set off major newspaper wars, exploiting readers' fears of modernization. Did Knowles really survive for months at a time in the untamed wilderness without any aid, and why is the answer still so vital to the American psyche? Part adventure story, part cultural investigation, Naked in the Woods reveals a whole new dimension of our natural history.

Be the first kid on your block to read this book.

Anyway, have a great weekend everyone.