The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends (Paperback)

by Jan Harold Brunvand Ph.D. (Author) "Michigan State undergraduates of my era-the early 1950s-firmly believe that one of the married student housing units had the highest birthrate on campus because of..." (more)
Key Phrases: dormitory surprise, biker legends, phantom clowns, New York, United States, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Brunvand, an English professor at the University of Utah and author of four previous collections of modern folklore, including The Vanishing Hitchhiker , here offers another engaging compilation. He groups these resonant anecdotes, found in slightly modified versions around the world, into such sections as Sex and Scandal, and On-the-Job. In the former, the title piece tells of a train whose early morning whistle wakens couples in bed and leads to pregnancies. From the section titled Fun and Games, "Built in a Day" refers to taxi drivers' descriptions, tendered most often to tiresome American tourists, of such local monuments as the cathedral in Milan's Piazza di Duomo. Expanded from Brunvand's syndicated newspaper column, these accounts, for the most part, are attributed to the notorious FOAF--a "friend of a friend." Illustrations not seen by PW .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Folklorist Brunvand has compiled another collection of stories originally published in his nationally syndicated column, "Urban Legends." The author gives a lively analysis of these contemporary folk tales, also including accounts and variations received from his readers. Although the narratives are reported as true, they were most often told by an unnamed "friend of a friend" and involved outrageous antics or unbelievable coincidences. The study reveals recurrent motifs and concludes with "A Type-Index of Urban Legends" classifying the tales from all five of Brunvand's books. Not as informative as The Vanishing Hitchhiker ( LJ 10/15/81), but equally entertaining.
- Eloise R. Hitchcock, Tennessee Technological Univ. Lib., Cookeville
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (October 17, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393312089
• ISBN-13: 978-0393312089
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,222,522 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very fun collection of legends, February 12, 2001

By	Benjamin Denes (Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've always been one of those people who love to hear a good, ironic story - my alltime favourite being the babysitter who gets the crank calls - and was pleased to find this enjoyable series of books. This was my first one, and I really enjoyed it.

The review Amazon posted is true in a sense, but there are so many stories out there that I doubt that Jan will ever "rewrite the same book" over and over. Awesome book!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!, July 2, 1998

By A Customer

Professor Brunvand provides an informative and entertaining account of urban legends (or urban myths). Professor Brunvand is so revered that he was recently referred to in an episode of "Millenium" which dealt with urban myths.

I recommend that readers read his other books about urban legends.

3.0 out of 5 stars Moderately interesting., August 25, 2008

By	James Yanni (Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo. USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Some of these stories are interesting and/or amusing; others are less so. Brunvand occasionally gets repetitive as he goes into great detail on the minor variations on the same story, and I also find that he is inclined to define stories as urban legends (and therefore fictional) that I am perfectly willing to believe have happened, probably many times. In fact, his title story for this book includes one person who says that her parents have always told her that it truly happened in her case, so it is no longer merely something that happened to "a friend of a friend", but can actually be traced to a specific occurance to a specific person, yet he still leaves it as an urban legend. And I certainly believe that any number of people have lost major portions of their doctoral dissertations, if not the entirety of them, by computer crashes that happened when they hadn't been backing up their material as assiduously as they should.

Brunvand's delivery of his stories is sometimes quite good, but other times is rather dry and academic.