Flashback Monday of sorts: just to give everyone an idea on how long I've been blogging, this is a pic of my daughter that I had used in my photo blog back in the late 2000's. She is now 24 1/2 and a university freshman pursuing a dual PhD/Masters (already has a BA) in neuroscience; the two stores in the background filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and were (mostly) liquidated.
As I've mentioned previously, non-fiction is my preferred genre to read. It started with the Guinness Book of World Records, but quickly spidered off into other sub-genres under that umbrella, including one of my perennial faves: true crime.
Now I know that sounds weird, but true crime really became my go-to non-fiction genre for most of my adult life. Whenever I had a problem in finding something to read, I could always depend on true crime coming through for me.
Fast forward a few decades. Having exhausted most of what I have chosen to read about in true crime, I moved on to other topics under the queasy literary umbrella that is death that happened to strike my fancy. One of the odder topics that had struck my fancy was how people passed away performing/pursuing certain outdoor activities (aka The Darwin Awards), of which one, visiting a national park, is the subject of this post.
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I had first heard about this particular book while I was watching a documentary about North America a few years ago, so I decided to check it out. As the subtitle suggests, it contains all kinds of Darwin Awards activity (along with some that were decidedly not Darwin Awards eligible) that has happened since Yellowstone was first opened back in 1872.
The one thing that stood out to me was not the fact they had records of untimely deaths dating back to 1872, nor the fact that the book was written by (at the time of publication) a member of the NPS, but the fact that this book is an updated second edition, circa 2014, with the first edition being published in 1995.
It kind of boggles the mind that a second (and apparently final) edition had to be produced in order to bring this darker side of Yellowstone to completion (as of 2014).
Not to weird anyone out any further than they already are by reading this post, but I found this book to be quite the engaging read. While some of the events are distasteful to read, Lee managed to weave in the history of Yellowstone quite effectively throughout his narrative. Essentially, you're not just reading a book about smart people doing stupid things, or nature doing stupid things to smart people (with tragic results), but you're also reading a thoroughly researched history of Yellowstone too.
If your secret guilty pleasure is reading stories about people who nominate themselves for a Darwin Award, this book is for you. It's well written, highly enjoyable tome that treats the profoundly stupid, the simply careless and the those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with equal gravitas, thus letting the reader judge for themselves the merit of each and every story.
I sincerely hope that this latest installment of my personal bookcase has met or exceeded your expectations this week.
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