The Darwin Awards commemorate 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 lawnchair 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.

The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action contains tales of misadventure. It is intended to be viewed as a safety manual, not a how-to-guide. The stories illustrate evolution working through natural selection: Those whose actions have lethal personal consequences are weeded out of the gene pool. Your decisions can kill you, so pay attention and stay alive.

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AUTHOR
Wendy Northcutt is a graduate of UC-Berkeley with a degree in molecular biology. She started collecting the stories that make up the Darwin Awards in 1993, and founded www.DarwinAwards.com soon thereafter. She has been profiled in Salon magazine, and now divides her time between managing the website and working as an Internet consultant. Her award-winning website is one of the most popular humor sites on the web today, with over 400,000 visitors a month and growing. It has received acclaim from USA Today, the BBC and Yahoo!, and was chosen as a Cool Site of the Year 2000.

NARRATOR
Jason Harris, narrator of The Darwin Awards II, has hosted Nickledeon's Double Dare 2000 and has voiced the lead character for the animated television show, Welcome To Eltingville, seen on the Cartoon Network. His feature film credits include The Guru and Unfaithful, and he has appeared on numerous television shows, including Law & Order, Special Victims Unit and All My Children.

REVIEWS
Publishers Weekly
"Jason Harris does an excellent job of reading each reported incident; basically, they sound like standup comedy."

San Francisco Weekly
"It's hard to say whether these stories are disturbing or reassuring-or both-but they're deeply entertaining nonetheless."