The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design

by Wendy Northcutt, Julie Schaller (Narrated by), Patrick Lawlor (Narrated by), TBA (Read by)

Overview

The Darwin Awards 4 commemorates those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it, showing us just how uncommon common sense can be!

Meet the absentminded terrorist who opens a mail bomb returned to him for insufficient postage. Marvel at the thief who steals electrical wires before shutting off the current. Gape at the would-be pilot who flies his lawn chair suspended from helium balloons into air-traffic lanes.

These tales of trial and awe-inspiring error illustrate the ongoing saga of survival of the fittest in all its selective glory! The author has appeared in USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, The (NY) Daily News, Boston Herald, Publisher Weekly, BookPage and CNN.com.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593160852
Publisher:	Listen & Live Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	10/24/2006
Edition description:	Abridged
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 6.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

A graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in molecular biology, Wendy Northcutt began collecting the stories that make up the Darwin Awards in 1993. Her award-winning Web site www.DarwinAwards.com is one of the most popular humor pages on the Web. The Darwin Awardshave been profiled in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. Wendy 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, The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design, The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution, and The Darwin Awards: Countdown to Extinction.

Editorial Reviews

The fourth in a series of such books by the author, this seamless abridgment reports the antics of real individuals who have acted so stupidly that they sometimes die, thus removing themselves from the reproductive chain. Starting a paper fire under a car engine that is too cold to start, snowmobiling across water, blowing up outhouses, idiotic gun mishaps—these true stories are sometimes funny, sometimes sad. They are told alternately by the two narrators, whose pacing and phrasing serve the material well. Patrick Lawlor Girard's energetic performance includes foreign accents that work more often than not. His vocal skill and reportorial urgency make co-narrator Julie Schaller sound too innocent or casual by comparison. T.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

AUG/SEP 07 - AudioFile

The first Darwin Awards book in three years proves that the steep climb up the evolutionary ladder has been more difficult for some than others. Like its predecessors, this mind-boggling numbers honors those hapless souls who have improved our gene pool by weeding themselves out of existence. The Darwin Awards 4 contains more than 100 astonishing yet true tales of involuntary self-immolators. These posthumous honorees include a homeowner who terminated termites (and himself) by filling his home with natural gas and a handyman who attempted to weld together a chain and a hand grenade. Explosive fun.

“The Darwin Awards is a riot to read. Deeply entertaining.”—San Francisco Weekly
 
"Delightfully funny, The Darwin Awards, taken together, constitute a delicious sermon in support of common sense."—The Baltimore Sun

From the Publisher