The Darwin Awards

The Darwin Awards
Author: Wendy Northcutt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2001
Genre: Accident victims
ISBN: 9780752844510

One of the best known and most frequently visited web sites is the Darwin Awards web site. Practically everyone who is on the net has received a Darwin story in their e-mail at one time or another. It is one of those legendary sites which has become part of the fabric of being on-line. Started in 1993 by biologist Wendy Northcutt she set out to collect together and authenticate stories of individuals around the world who, through their stupidity, have removed themselves from the gene pool, (i.e. killed themselves). These are the people for whom warnings such as 'coffee is hot' and 'this superman cape does not enable the wearer to fly' were made. This is black humour elevated to its purest commercial form. There are rules here too. The candidate must: exhibit astounding misapplication of judgement; remove himself/herself from the gene pool; be capable of sound judgement; be self selecting (i.e. it was their fault) and the event must be verifiable.

The Darwin Awards Next Evolution

The Darwin Awards Next Evolution
Author: Wendy Northcutt
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2008
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9780525950851

Features examples of people whose lack of common sense resulted in their demise, in a tribute to how the evolutionary process is improved when individuals of questionable intelligence accidentally remove themselves from the gene pool.

Charles and Emma

Charles and Emma
Author: Deborah Heiligman
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2009-01-06
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1429934956

Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, his revolutionary tract on evolution and the fundamental ideas involved, in 1859. Nearly 150 years later, the theory of evolution continues to create tension between the scientific and religious communities. Challenges about teaching the theory of evolution in schools occur annually all over the country. This same debate raged within Darwin himself, and played an important part in his marriage: his wife, Emma, was quite religious, and her faith gave Charles a lot to think about as he worked on a theory that continues to spark intense debates. Deborah Heiligman's new biography of Charles Darwin is a thought-provoking account of the man behind evolutionary theory: how his personal life affected his work and vice versa. The end result is an engaging exploration of history, science, and religion for young readers. Charles and Emma is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.

A Year of Living Kindly

A Year of Living Kindly
Author: Donna Cameron
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1631524801

2020 New York City Big Book Awards Winner in Self-Help: Motivational 2020 14th Annual National Indie Excellence Award-Winner in Self-Help Motivational 2019 IPPY Gold Medal Winner: Self Help 2019 Nautilius Book Awards Gold Winner in Personal Growth & Self-Help 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Gold Medal Winner in Motivational 2019 Readers’ Favorite Awards: Gold Medal Winner in Nonfiction Self-Help 2019 Eric Hoffer Award Winner: Self-Help 2019 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards: First Place in Self-Help 2019 Chanticleer I & I Book Awards for Instruction and Insight Finalist 2019 International Book Awards: Finalist, Self-Help: General 2019 Nancy Pearl Best Book Award: Finalist in Memoir 2019 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal: Finalist 2019 Foreword Indies Finalist: Adult Nonfiction—Self-Help Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2018 Being kind is something most of us do when it’s easy and when it suits us. Being kind when we don’t feel like it, or when all of our buttons are being pushed, is hard. But that’s also when it’s most needed; that’s when it can defuse anger and even violence, when it can restore civility in our personal and virtual interactions. Kindness has the power to profoundly change our relationships with other people and with ourselves. It can, in fact, change the world. In A Year of Living Kindly—using stories, observation, humor, and summaries of expert research—Donna Cameron shares her experience committing to 365 days of practicing kindness. She presents compelling research into the myriad benefits of kindness, including health, wealth, longevity, improved relationships, and personal and business success. She explores what a kind life entails, and what gets in the way of it. And she provides practical and experiential suggestions for how each of us can strengthen our kindness muscle so choosing a life of kindness becomes ever easier and more natural. An inspiring, practical guide that can help any reader make a commitment to kindness, A Year of Living Kindly shines a light on how we can create a better, safer, and more just world—and how you can be part of that transformation.

Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 92
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 0761354867

Darwin Awards VI

Darwin Awards VI
Author: Wendy Northcutt
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2010-10-20
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0143203584

(The countdown has begun . . . ) What distinguishes humans from baser animals is our higher intelligence. This is because most humans know to think twice before headbutting a coconut or biting down on a live wire. Intelligent individuals generally know not to use a mattress pad as a floatation device, or to kitesurf in a hurricane. Darwin Award winners, however, lack this basic common sense. Named for the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards honour those who help natural selection by taking a swan dive into the shallow end of the gene pool. From attaching a five-horsepower engine to a barstool, to hammering a metal hook into an explosive device, to using a Taser to treat a snake bite, The Darwin Awards: Countdown to Extinction show that the countdown (to human extinction) is well underway – and we won't exit this mortal coil without one last laugh. Illustrated and featuring all-new tales of the marvellously macabre, The Darwin Awards: Countdown to Extinction chronicles humans who step onto the lowest rung on the evolutionary ladder and prove that intelligence is not as common among humans as we'd like to think.

Darwin the Writer

Darwin the Writer
Author: George Levine
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2011-06-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191620629

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, arguably the most important book written in English in the nineteenth century, transformed the way we looked at the world. It is usually assumed that this is because the idea of evolution was so staggeringly powerful. Prize-winning author George Levine suggests that much of its influence was due, in fact, to its artistry; to the way it was written. Alive with metaphor, vivid descriptions, twists, hesitations, personal exclamations, and humour, the prose is imbued with the sorts of tensions, ambivalences, and feelings characteristic of great literature. Although it is certainly a work of "science," the Origin is equally a work of "literature," at home in the company of celebrated Victorian novels such as Middlemarch and Bleak House, books that give us a unique yet recognisable sense of what the world is really like, while not being literally 'true'. Darwin's enormous cultural success, Levine contends, depended as much on the construction of his argument and the nature of his language, as it did on the power of his ideas and his evidence. By challenging the dominant reading of his work, this impassioned and energetic book gives us a Darwin who is comic rather than tragic, ebullient rather than austere, and who takes delight in the wild and fluid entanglement of things.

What Darwin Saw

What Darwin Saw
Author: Rosalyn Schanzer
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2009-01-13
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781426303968

In 1831 a 22-year-old naturalist named Charles Darwin stepped aboard the HMS Beagle as a traveling companion of an equally youthful sea captain called Robert FitzRoy. The Beagle’s round-the-world surveying journey lasted five long years on the high seas. The young Darwin noticed everything, and proved himself an avid and detailed chronicler of daily events on the Beagle and onshore. What Darwin Saw takes young readers back to the pages of his journals as they travel alongside Darwin and read his lively and awestruck words about the wonders of the world. We follow Darwin’s voyage, looking over his shoulder as he explores new lands, asks questions about the natural world, and draws groundbreaking conclusions. We walk in his footsteps, collecting animals and fossils, experiencing earthquakes and volcanoes, and meeting people of many cultures and languages. We examine his opinions on life in all its forms. We consider the thoughts of this remarkable scientist, who poured his observations and research into his expansive theories about life on Earth. In this exciting and educational account, Charles Darwin comes alive as an inspirational model for kids who think and question the world around them.

Darwin's Ark

Darwin's Ark
Author: Philip Appleman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 83
Release: 2009
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780253220929

The world of Charles Darwin imagined in poetry and art

The Darwin Awards: The Descent of Man

The Darwin Awards: The Descent of Man
Author: Wendy Northcutt
Publisher: Running Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005-11-29
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9780762425617

In this volume, men meet their inner idiots as they test their testosterone levels by petting sharks, kissing snakes, chasing beer cans, and juggling hand grenades. Only when it's too late do these would-be Alpha males realize that they're actually Omega males, providing ample proof of a missing “Why?” chromosome.