Darwin Awards: Intelligent Design

Author: Wendy Northcutt
Recommended Age: 10 +
Publisher:  Plume; Reprint edition 
ISBN:  0452288800 
Year Published: 2007
No. Pages: 292
Genre: Informational
Main Character Gender:Mixed
Read & Reviewed by: Hunter

This book is the fourth in the Darwin Awards series that celebrate the men and woman who removed themselves from our gene pool through stupidity. In their minds, sharks don’t bite, people can fly and driving a motorcycle with their feet makes perfect sense. Most of us use common sense, Darwin Award winners do not. To win, nominees must eliminate themselves in shockingly stupid ways. The Darwin Awards are based on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and survival of the fittest.  Award winners are clearly not the ‘’fittest’’ The nominees are scored and reviewed according to a series of reviews.

My favorite story was about two guys who while, drunk chose to dangle themselves over a busy freeway in downtown Seattle to see who had the most strength. One of the friends plummeted to his death.  Another favorite story was about a woman who ignored warnings of flooding and a bridge was being washed out bridge. She was driving a BMW X3, an off road vehicle, and so, believed herself to be immune from the dangers. Later, her body was found floating down the river.

I loved this book because it was hilarious. I couldn’t believe how incredibly stupid these people were. Despite the deaths, I couldn’t help but laugh. Each story is a page to two pages so I only had to concentrate on one story at a time. This made the book easier to digest.

The pictures added humour and helped me visualize each story. In most stories, the writers added text boxes with facts to explain some of the stupidity with science. The story titles captured my attention. I just had to read the stories entitled Rocketing to Glory, Human Torch and Crotch Rocket. The organization of this book was well structured and made the book more appealing.

I rated this book a ten out of ten because how descriptive the stories were, and it was hilarious. This book took me a day to read and I would recommend it to people that want a quick read or a fun read. And I would also recommend this book to 12+ because there is some sexual content and some younger kids would think its funny and maybe try to do some of the things that happen in the book.