Rating: 
Summary: Distracting, but no more.
Review: Virtually everyone has already seen these accounts on the internet and in email. Having them all together is really not worthwhile. It turns out (as might be expected) that the really entertaining Darwin Awards are fictional, and while they're included, relegating them to "Urban Legends" takes a little wind out of the whole concept of the Award. With few exceptions, the book is filled out with less amusing accidents and mistakes. The author tries to add value with various debunking, a few bits of scientific trivia, and some tangential comments at the start of each chapter. On the whole, it's a distracting collection - quickly read, but quite forgettable.
Rating:
Summary: Good bathroom reading, but not much else --
Review: A housemate of mine used to keep this book in a convenient place for bathroom reading. This is really the only conceivable use that I can see for it--the content is too slight to be worthy of storage on a bookshelf, the book itself too small to grace the coffee table, and it's far too morbid to be kept in, say, the waiting room at a psychiatrist's office. So the bathroom it is. As the foreward helpfully warns, this should not be read all at once: it's just a little too much, and it becomes progressively unfunnier. Assuming that you're into this kind of thing (and don't try to pretend that you're not), it's really best to take it one story at a time. Although a couple of the stories are genuinely humorous, most of them are really heartbreaking when you stop to think about the consequences--for humanitarian purposes, it's much better to think of these as outstanding examples of behavior to avoid rather than simply laughing in the face of the kinds of unmitigated disasters that ended the lives of so many of these (admittedly often very stupid) poor people. My only other complaint is that the whole thing reads like it was taken directly from the website. There's a little too much internet-based content, and it seems far more self-serving than chic. This also serves as a useful reminder that most of the content within this book is available online, and that it is really best viewed there.
Rating: 
Summary: Ha!
Review: And some thought the MTV show Jack@$$ was beyond human explanation. Enter The Darwin Awards, compiler extraordinaire. My Driver's Ed teacher emphasized this for defensive driving: Identify, Predict, Decide, and Execute. Good 'ol IPDE would've been a helpful notice to those who were worthy of a Darwin Award. These honored individuals made me say "what if", "he could've", and "i can't believe it" several times. You'll laugh, sympathize, and feel smart all in one sitting. If you ever need to know why you still exist, the Darwin Awards answers that plain and simple: survival of the fittest (and smartest).
Rating:
Summary: DEATH BY TERMINAL STUPIDITY
Review: According to Ms. Northcutt, in addition to the survival of the fittest there is a second important component of evolution. This is the non-survival of the most unfit. By this she means those genetically coded to do something so stupid that they lose their lives as a consequence. The book consists of a number of short anecdotes describing these often sensational, but occasionally mundane, deaths. She identifies which anecdotes are validated, which are not, which are urban legends, and which are personal reports. Whether you believe them or not, if you have a macabre sense of humor, you will probably enjoy them. She has a category that she calls "Honorable Mention" In this category, the protagonists live to regret their stupidity, as opposed to the true Darwin Award recipients, who are too dead to accept their awards in person. (Yes, I know, there are no degrees of dead. You either are or you aren't. So sue me.) I'm going to have some fun by talking about a few of these live folks. There's a bank robber who hires a limo to take him to the bank he robs. After the robbery he stops at a coffee shop to relax while awaiting the return of his limo. Probably not the best escape plan. A female drug user calls the police to complain that she's been cheated and given a packet of baking soda when she's paid her good hard cash for cocaine. The police come, and they test her purchase which turns out to really be cocaine. Guess what happened to her. How about the guy who's picked up by the police on suspicion of robbing several vending machines and tries to pay his bail of $400 in small coins. Everyone has $400 in small coins hanging around, right? One more Honorable Mention: The guy who is running from the police, parks his car and runs through the doors of a prison, thinking he is entering a mall. Anyone could make a little mistake like that. I can't end this review without at least talking about one real, honest-to-goodness Darwin Award where someone does his duty to the human genetic pool by dying of terminal stupidity. Here goes: A prison guard happens to also be a voyeur. While on a roof, spying on a prisoner and his (the prisoner's) wife during a conjugal visit, the guard becomes so interested in the action below that he trips over an air vent, crashes through a skylight, and plummets to his death. There's a valuable lesson to be learned here. "If you peep, don't walk."
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing to see here.
Review: There's no way around it; this book presents the deaths of real people as entertainment. As other readers have noted, many of these stories just seem tragic, and the idea of millions of readers getting a good laugh out of the death of someone's son, someone's sister, somone's father, is disturbing. Second, the name "Darwin" Awards is catchy but a misnomer, and a bad one. A better name would be "social Darwinism", and even that is really a misuse of Darwin's name. Along with the phrase 'survival of the fittest', it has done a great deal to mislead people as to the meaning of evolution. You'd be better off watching reruns of "Jackass" than spending money on this book; at least everyone on that show survives.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting In Small Doses
Review: I feel about this book the way I felt after reading a compendium of Letterman's Top Ten Lists: The subject is engaging in short bursts, but tiresome if read for long periods of time. Or, the perfect bathroom book. Man, or at least some number of the 6 billion of us, is often stupid. Often that stupidity results in death. This book is a collection of short news accounts, anecdotes and descriptions of stupidity leading to death. The reader gets everything from six Egyptians going down a water well after a chicken (only the chicken didn't drown); a man who used a lighter to see if any gasoline was left in a gas can; a man who used the same source of illumination to check for a charge through the business end of a shotgun; a Delawarean consumed by his own pet boa constrictor; and, other senseless ways in which, according to the author, "the stupidist of us have improved the gene pool by removing themselves from it." Hence the title "Darwin Awards." Some problems with this book for me: There is very little narrative and what little there is tends to be repetitive on the "Darwin" angle and sophomoric, and; the author includes "urban legends" which may be interesting but probably aren't true. Some of these tales of ignorance and stupidity do astound and amaze (a few are genuinely sad). But, this is a list of news clippings or internet sources, each discrete and unaffiliated with what comes before or after. As such, I enjoyed it most in short bursts as a "filler" book.
Rating:
Summary: Awful - I used to be a Darwin fan.
Review: This book contains stories that in most cases are more pathetic than funny. And that's coming from a guy who used to be a big Darwin Awards fan. A typical story tells of an abusive boyfriend (guffaw) who goes to jail for beating his girlfriend (chortle). She begs the judge to release him because she can't afford the rent (hee hee). He kills her and burns her body (giggle), and then blows himself up trying to burn the house down. Haw Haw haw! If you like that you'll love the book.
Most of the funnier stories are "Urban Legends", which is to say, fabrications. Even these aren't written with good comic sense. Worst by far is the revelation that the two best Darwin winners ever ( The twin dufuses at the Metalica concert and the home made Ford fairlane/Rocket sled), were made up. I would have been happier if I had not read the book and had my bubble burst. Actually I received a gift set of volumes 1 and 2. Didn't finish the first. Don't plan on reading the second.
Rating:
Summary: Often funny, but a bit too much padding
Review: A dear friend of mine gave me this book and its sequel as a Christmas gift. I have to say, the tales are often very, very funny. Some of the stories are just bizarre beyond imagining, and the depth to which people can stoop is sometimes surreal. There are, however, two complaints I have with the book. First, there is too much padding. The intros that philosophically discuss "hard cases," instances in which it is debarted whether someone is a candidate for a Darwin Award, such as celibate priests, aren't terribly interesting. And they are disingenuous, since clearly no one wants to debate the finer points, but just get on to the stories. Also, the book is padded by the Urban Legends, which are just a waste of space. We are interested only in the "real" stories, not the legendary ones. My second and more substantive complaint is that the entire concept of the books borders on callousness. Good lord, these people died! These aren't actually jokes, but tragedies. I would hate to know that my own death managed to serve as entertainment for others. So, while I found many of the stories funny, a voice kept whispering in my ear that perhaps I oughtn't.
Rating:
Summary: Not High Literature, just a lot of fun
Review: This book had me laughing and shaking my head at the utter stupidity of some award winners. One reviewer thought Wendy Northcutt's writing to be written in a condescending tone, as if she were 'talking to children' or something to that effect, but it was really quite tongue-in-cheek and fun to read. I took the author's advice in her intro and read it in small doses, a half or a full chapter coming home on the train, and it was perfect. Any longer than that, and your mind almost becomes numb to the tales of senseless stupidity. This book is a real load of fun, buy it and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Funny, a caution to would be award winnners
Review: Amusing and frightning. "Urban Legends" should have been left out, because they aren't real. Someone should remind the author, who left cancer research to write comedy, that natural selection is about the only part of Darwinism that has any validity (and no power to create species at that!). I only say that so she can avoid further embarassment with more pseudoscientific allusions in future books. Stick to the funny stuff.
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