The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection (Hardcover)

by Wendy Northcutt (Author) "Darwin Awards commemorate those individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion..." (more)
Key Phrases: unknown veracity, Darwin Award, Darwinian Rule Violation, Associated Press (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Darwin humor? It seemed to work in the first volume, which spent five months on the New York Times best sellers list.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
A second selection of legendary true tales of people who have improved our gene pool by killing themselves in spectacularly stupid ways. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (October 29, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525946233
• ISBN-13: 978-0525946236
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #805,586 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Recent Follies as Documented Gallows Humor, October 29, 2001

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

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!

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One Too Many Trips To The Well, January 13, 2002

By A Customer

I really enjoyed the first "Darwin" installment, but Darwin II does not cut it. First of all, too much of the book is filler (author's opinions & editorializing, as well as boring discussions of evolutionary theory), and not enough awards are presented. About 40 percent of this book is chaff, with 60 percent consisting of award cases. What really upset me, however, is that of the 60 percent of this book devoted to presenting actual Darwin Awards, an entire chapter consists of repeats from the first volume! Northcutt begins this chapter by saying "here enjoy some repeats of your favorite Darwins from my first book" or words to that effect. What a consumer rip off! Why would anyone want to pay twice to read the same stories! If I hadn't already thrown my receipt away, this one would be going back to the bookstore for a full refund. What invariably happens in movie sequels is that sooner or later the producers make one too many trips to the well, and you end up with something as awful as "Jaws 3" for example. Well, the fatal trip to the well appears to have already been made with the Darwin series. Let the buyer beware.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dumb People Do Dumb Things and Get Their Just Due, January 30, 2003

By	George Buttner "Agent0042" (Dayton, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Darwin Awards II is a great book that shows just what can happen when people fail to use common sense. It's filled with well-written, cautionary tales of people who did astoundingly stupid things and paid the ultimate price: death, or in some less drastic cases, sterility.

If this were the only thing this book had, it would still be a good book. But this book offers far more than that. In addition to these tales (some certified and some not and both are clearly marked), there are Honorable Mentions (people who did stupid things but didn't pay the ultimate price, but who still might in the future) and Personal Accounts. The book is also sprinkled with the author's wisdom, applicable quotes and each chapter opens with a discussion of a topic related to the subject of the chapter. The book also integrates well with the website, where you can voice your opinion on the book or stories in it, submit new stories, or read more about a particular story in the book, or a topic related to it.

As the book says, the grimness of some of these tales makes it such that it may be that it's best read in small doses. But whether you learn something, or just laugh, you'll love The Darwin Arwards II.