Product Description

The Darwin Awards - legendary true tales from www.DarwinAwards.com - commemorate the remains of people who have improved our gene pool by killing themselves in spectacularly stupid ways. One of the most popular manifestations of modern-day pessimism, the Awards are known and loved by practically everyone with access to email. This sequel to the bestselling Darwin Awards book brings together more true stories on the universal themes of death and stupidity, including: * Femme Fatalities * Engines of Destruction * Male-Functions The Darwin Awards: true stories that will make you glad to be alive!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19880 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
A second selection of legendary true tales of people who have improved our gene pool by killing themselves in spectacularly stupid ways.

About the Author
Wendy Northcutt is the bestselling author of The Darwin Awards. She majored in Molecular Biology at UC Berkeley, and worked in biological research. She manages the Darwin Awards website in her spare time and now works as an internet consultant.

Customer Reviews

Cruel and Cynical
The Darwin Awards are given to people who manage to kill themselves in the most stupid way possible. As a rule reading these stories would not particularly offend me, but in this case I found a number of reasons to hate this book:

1. Many of the people were not actually that stupid, just unlucky.
2. Wendy Northcutt is essentially making money out of free stories off the internet, anyone could do that.
3. Northcutt starts each chapter with a pseudo intellectual debate that is embarrassingly bad.
4. There are references to stories that are not eligible for the Darwin Award, but Northcutt still thinks that it is acceptable to profit from them as long as she adds a disclaimer e.g. 10 year old boy dies trying to open a can of pop with a nail.
5. The appendices are a joke and one contains Northcutt's replies to some of the people from the Darwin site. Basically she flames them when they have not chance of retort. Embarrassing and plain weird.

I found this book a depressing and cynical attempt to make money. The idea of collating stupid deaths is not what angered me, but the fact that real accidents were written about then a sentence at the end explained why they were not really Darwin 'winners'. I find this highly disagreeable and added to the awful attempts by Woodcutt to justify her copying stuff of the internet and not being funny - this book should be pulped.

Recent Follies as Documented Gallows Humor
If you liked The Darwin Awards, you will find this book to be another winner.

Like The Darwin Awards, let me note that if you do not find witless death and mutilation humorous, avoid this book. Three of the mutilation examples have a sexual context and are pretty gross.

If you find fatal and grisly mishaps funny, you will enjoy the book greatly. In fact, this has to be the best articulated book ever written about stupid ways to die and lose fertility. Anyone will feel smarter and better about themselves after reading these stories!

This book is about people "removing themselves from the gene pool in sublimely idiotic fashion" in "true accidental blunders." The incidents involve ways that people "unthinkingly engineer their own downfalls, oblivious to warning signs that the rest of us automatically heed."

The book's premise is very well framed to put you in a humorous mood. The idea is that when people do stupid things that get them killed or keep them from having children, they thus perform a service by improving the gene pool for the remaining humans. Ms. Northcutt uses many witty essays and quotes to emphasize this point, and establishes the mood well.

She has rules for these awards. To win the Darwin Award, you must (1) die or be unable to procreate after the incident, (2) show "an astounding misapplication of common sense," (3) cause your own downfall, (4) have the ability to use sound judgment (are not too young or permanently mentally impaired) and (5) have the incident verified by someone else. If you don't meet all these tests, you can still get an honorable mention, or be described as an urban legend or a personal account. I thought these distinctions made good sense, because the story's focus and credibility weighs heavily on the interest it creates for the reader drawn to this subject.

In an improvement over The Darwin Awards, Ms. Northcutt has shared feedback from her readers challenging the veracity of various urban legends, personal accounts, and honorable mentions. As a result, this book is tighter than The Darwin Awards.

In another improvement, the stories much more carefully document the victim's involvement with illegal drugs and alcohol than in The Darwin Awards. In this way, the cautionary lesson about using these substances is brought home more correctly

The stories are grouped around themes: violating the seven deadly sins, women as the genetically removed party, water misadventures, problems with technology, men acting macho, misadventures with animals, explosions, and criminal capers. There is also a chapter on stories that do not qualify, and a dozen of the all-time favorites of on-line readers.

I rated the book down one star, though, because the average humor level here was not as good as in The Darwin Awards. Almost all of the examples came from 1998-2001, so there were not as many examples to choose from. I also think the verification process needs some further work. In many cases, it is in a publication or broadcast news report (which may have an incentive to "improve" the stories to make them better, and sell more issues). Finally, I think the verified examples are vastly more interesting than the fables. I would like to see a version in the future that is only made up of verified cases. I estimate that less than a quarter of these examples were verified.

I came away with two new themes from reading this book. Guns need to be treated with much more respect. The deaths and dismemberment from guns occur with considerable frequency here. The other theme is that people develop so much self-confidence in their abilities that they decide that the "rules" do not apply to them.

Be cautious, rather than daring, so you can live to enjoy the next book in this humorous, cautionary series!

Excellant
This is one of the funniest books I have read in years. This book was taken on holiday by someone else but I ended up having it most of the time, it kept me enterained whilst on the bus, and waiting for other things. The fact that they are all short stories means that its great for just reading on the odd occasion but you can also sit and read a big chunk as well.
Some of the dumm things that people have done really make you think, and I pray to God that these things never have to happen to me or someone I know, youll see what I mean when you read it!
BEST BOOK EVER!