The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection

Darwin Awards #2

by Wendy Northcutt

Featuring more than one hundred brand-new award-winners, honorable mentions, exclusive material, and demystified urban legends, as well as returning favorites, a satirical celebration of the worst traits of humanity is filled with an abundance of stories pertaining to human idiocy.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Comedy, Science, Short Stories, Death, Adult

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Wendy Northcutt graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in molecular biology. She began collecting the stories that make up the Darwin Awards in 1993 and founded www.DarwinAwards.com shortly after.

Northcutt is the author of the international bestsellers The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action, The Darwin Awards 2: Unnatural Selection, The Darwin Awards 3: Survival of the Fittest, and The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design. Her newest addition to the series is The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution."

Reviews

[Chris Dietzel]

This was really bad. The best analogy I can come up with for this book is that it's like a really funny comedian's comedy routine... if the routine was told not by the comedian but by someone who has never told a joke before and doesn't understand how to tell them. All of the stories fell flat. Stories that should have been funny felt like chores to read.

[Ray]

I had high expectations of this book, having seen and enjoyed snippets of the Darwin Awards on the net over the years. It felt really flat to me - disjointed and badly written.

In one sense it serves me right for expecting to be entertained by people dying in stupid ways.

[Sean]

Perhaps the words on the cover of Wendy Northcutt's "The Darwin Awards II" best sum it up: "A new volume commemorating individuals who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it in a sublimely idiotic fashion." (For those who want a better explanation of what the Darwin Awards are, see my review of "The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution). In this latest bundle of stupidity, readers are treated to the numerous tales of death, all of which are oddly funny.

The author explains each Darwin Award-winning instance with a well-written paragraph or two. Somehow, she always manages to make it funny. Perhaps that's a testament to the incredible lack of foresight of the people featured in each story. The author also sets up the moments before the accidents, sort of feeding information to the reader until they get a good sense of what is about to happen. At that point they'll think, "No way is he going to do that!"--which, inevitably, the hapless person does.

This is the type of book that will make you laugh out loud and get other people interested in it. Indeed, reading the Darwin Awards gives you some great conversation starters, as well as a good source of laughs.

On a more serious note, this book is also full of life lessons. When looking inside a can to see if there's gas inside, do I light a match for better visibility? No. Thanks to the Darwin Awards, if I'm ever in that situation, I won't do anything incredibly stupid.

Overall, this is an extraordinary read that makes Failblog and FML pale in comparison. It's funny, well-written, and is endlessly entertaining.

[Simon]

Wow, failure to complete a book for a long extended period of time. How long was it?

August to February, yikes. i will have that story with a few books that I have left behind.

Anyway, generally this book was a wonderful continuation of the series that causes so much amusement in the facts and fictions of the deaths of our fellow man. and woman on the rare occasion.

The bloody gory stories are the ones that make us cringe in sublime pleasure and eager to share the dastardly tale with others. Half the thrill is seeing their cringing expressions as they imagine the hardships they would face if thrust into such a situation. Thankfully, most of us have that common sense factor (gene) and will spare ourselves the honor of being a Darwin Award Winner.

[Bryan]

I'm so ashamed!: I bought this book in a moment of weakness. I knew about the Darwin Awards, having received samples of same over the internet. The better part of my nature informed me that the very notion of finding something funny in stories of stupid misadventures with tragic consequences was . . . (how you say?) . . . wrong. Wrong and stupid. If a dim-witted child guffaws at these stories, one makes allowances. For an adult to enjoy them is beyond the pale.
There are some who are horrified at the practice of book-burning. Well, I am not. I love books, but I had a nice little bonfire with this one, and the world was a better place for it.

[ஐ Katya (Book Queen)ஐ]

This book takes a humorous look at how stupid humans can be. Each chapter is a different category. Although reading the actual darwin awards is entertaining, I don't recommend you read the opening chapter descriptions. Many go into things like online computer safety which has nothing to do with the awards in that given chapter. Or are boring disertations on how any species evolves over time.

[Brian]

Meh. Might be ok if you read a few pages and set it down again over and over. As a book it just doesn't hang together despite the ample amounts of filler. The topic is the perfect source of interesting blog posts or online reading, but doesn't work in this format. Maybe teh first one was better, but I'd skip 'em both and check out the website instead.

[Lachlan]

The Darwin awards is about how natural selection works. Showing how people who do stupid stuff get removed from the gene pool. It's a great book and I would recommend it highly to anyone wanting to read books in the science genre as the author does a great job providing evidence for her theories and conclusions. I really enjoyed this book.

[R.K. Goff]

Uh. I guess this one wasn't my sense of humor. At all.

But the thing that really got me was the author's writing style. It seemed like a little much for the material she was presenting.

[P]

Too many non-Darwin awards as well as acknowledged hoaxes.

[Laurie Stoll]

A book that will make you laugh and shake your head!

[Lucinda Clarke]

A friend saw this in a charity shop and thought I would like it. A fun read, but not as funny as I'd hoped. A couple of stories made me chuckle and many of the author's comments were more amusing than the incidents themselves. I was pleased to see that all but a few of the daft actions were performed by men.

[Charlie]

Pretty funny, how are people so stupid haha

[David]

These are very funny in a dark,morbid sense. To win a Darwin Award, one must cause one's death in a stupid way and take one's self out of the gene pool. For example, two fishermen were cold,so they made a fire in their wooden boat! Another man who was a cheapskate wanted liposuction. Instead of going to a licensed surgeon, this nut had his neighbor do liposuction on him in a garage! You get the picture: stupidity kills and maims."What is the difference between genius and ignorance? Genius has limits."

[Pras]

Not as funny or weird as the first book. But the positive side is I got this edition gives many facts regarding on evolution or popular science and some explanation on how it works, beside the stories itself. Reading enough other people's misfortune in this book, hopefully in the future, i won't get in line for Darwin Award candidates.
Last, what I like best is the quotes..
here one of my favorite
famous last words "heyy fellas watch this!"
and there goes Darwin Award.

[dejah_thoris]

I didn't realize that I had read most of this book on my way to work Monday morning, but it's much like its predecessor. I did appreciate the second section of 14 women's stories though because women are so rarely mentioned in the Darwin Awards. The top ten conclusion though seemed unnecessary as the book is too short to let you forget any of the vignettes. Some of the disasters made for great lunch conversation though!

[Ken]

I almost felt guilty for reading about the foibles and - shall I go ahead and say it] - the utter stupidity of my fellow man. Yet, I am also a man of failure and foible. Still...

Some folks have died in very gruesome ways due to miscalculations and bad assumptions. We all need a greater dose of humility and wisdom. This book is funny, sad, outrageous, and probably could use a little more kindness in its delivery.

[Sam]

A further collection of amusing tales of how people have removed or nearly removed themselves from the human gene pool. Yet again some of these stories will make you laugh others will make you wanna grab the person and shake them until they realise their own stupidity (if they survived it obviously)

[Heather]

Ah the Darwin awards, I had always heard of them but this was the first time I read through one of the books. A fun, light and morbid read cautioning the use of common sense. Though most of the winners were enjoyable I tended to like the honorable mentions, the people who didn't quite succeed in offing themselves. The shear dumb luck just amazed me.

[Lacey]

I'm sure I found this book much more amusing the first time I read it. Now, not as much. Maybe in this world of reality T.V. and World's Dumbest I just find the shock factor gone. There really are people this stupid out there, in fact, there are a lot of people this stupid out there. A few good chuckles but not laugh out loud funny.

[Kirsti]

I've actually been reading this book off and on for a few weeks, being a perfect 'Bathroom Book'. I love reading the Darwin Awards,and this isn't the first time I've read this book. People dying is very rarely funny, unless they remove themselves from the gene pool in some decidedly stupid way. If you want to learn more, check out this series of very funny books!

[Brianna]

I got this book as a "Blind Date with a Book" from my local library. I didn't laugh out loud, but it was mildly entertaining. I can definitely see how a website or forum would be a better medium for these short anecdotes. That said, it's a very light read and enjoyable when you want to get away from bright screens for awhile, which is exactly what I wanted to do.

[Valerie]

Overall, the stories reminded me of what you would see on America's Funniest Home Videos or World's Dumbest Criminals. Therefore, I chuckled at a few of the mishaps but generally found the compilation a bit dull. Maybe my expectations were too high or maybe I have become too serious to appreciate this form of humor O.o

[Cedony]

Amusing. I read it in short bursts and liked the little introductions before every chapter because it provided some interesting information about evolutions. I wasn't very impressed to find that the entire last chapter was of rehashed Darwin awards.

[Cheryl Jensen]

With her books, I always start off laughing at peoples' idiocy, like the guy who tries to have liposuction in a garage using a vacuum, but by the end of the book feel sorry for everyone who leaves their mark on the world by dying a stupid death.

[Raj]

I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I guess most of the stories were just generally stupid and not in a hugely funny way. It was fairly short anyway and there were some interesting little mini-essays to start off each section.

[Kozmo Kliegl]

Continues to prove a variant on the Dan Rather quote (he mentioned Afros which got him into hot water) that Humanity is thinning its gene because the dumber people have more children (re: "Idiocracy")

[Sparrow]

This volume is a step up from the first because the discussions before each chapter delved into the more fascinating aspects of evolution and natural selection. I also liked the chapters of favorites and non-awards. Hope to see more like this in subsequent volumes.

[Dannuel Delizo]

Seriously, how stupid and useless people could be? To all the thieves out there, dont expect your victims to cooperate with your plans! bigger population means more idiots. it's the unnatural selection, baby!

[Kaethe]

I think I mentioned this with the first volume but do not attempt to consume too many stories at once. Yes, people do amazingly stupid things and die, but read too many at once and you'll start wanting everyone to get on with it.