Rating: 
Summary: Beyond Quinn
Review: Perhaps Daniel Quinn should have quit when he was ahead. His earlier works were intriguing and original, but Beyond Civilization raises questions which seem to be beyond Quinn's ability to address with anything other than simplistic solutions. Quinn begins with serious questions about the future of our world and the inability of our civilization to sustain itself. Unfortunately, his answers don't go beyond his singular idea that work should be organized tribally, like a circus. While this might make the daily ritual more fun than moving stones to the pyramid, he is unconvincing as to how this will save the world. Further, he avoids any serious discussion of other tribal applications, particularly communal living. Quinn admits he doesn't have any examples to offer other than the circus and his former newspaper, yet one must wonder how much research he has done and why he fails to analyse new directions in the business world which incorporate some of the same non-hierarchical concepts. Overall, the book is intriguing while it raises issues and as it starts the reader down a path of hope for the future. But, in the end it fails to deliver a satisfactory solution and leaves the reader with a thirst for better answers.
Rating: 
Summary: A great new addition to Quinnian thought
Review: I've read and reread all of Daniel Quinn's books. One of the things I like about them is that a theme introduced in one is usually expanded on in the next, so there's a progression and development of ideas from book to book. I was especially pleased to find a thematic index to all of Quinn's work at the back of Beyond Civilization. It's a real bonus to a book that's notable for it's ease of reading and clarity.
Rating:
Summary: Profound, and ultimately, hopeful
Review: Makes you understand that our grossly flawed culture is only the very tail end of a tremendously successful run of the race. With the realization that mankind itself is not flawed, but only the current culture is, the reader's mind (if open) moves beyond. The reader is forced to face humanity itself, not simply our faulted culture. Makes you realize that there _is_ hope for humanity.My life will now be divided into two categories: the time before I read Betyond Civilization, and the time after.
Rating:
Summary: human nature
Review: I haven't gotten all the way through Beyond Civilization yet, but I can honestly say it has proven to me that NOT every human being on this earth has fallen with our society. All of Daniel Quinn's words absorb into my mind because I have always thought about the very things Quinn has written about, only not as organized! I'm watching the news as I type and I feel sick to my stomache. This world could be so much more advanced, a happier place to be yourself without fear of judges, have a more organized heirarchy...but we don't. And it's all because we don't use our minds to the fullest...I'm only 20 years old and Daniel Quinn's books have installed hope within me that SOMEDAY, we could all be happy , together.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book is a great disappointment. While Quinn does indeed do a good job of tracing a lot of our contemporary problems to "civilization", he offers no realistic way out. His proposed solutions have been tried and failed. Nonetheless he protrays his "solutions" as if he has masterfully delivered to us a great and insightful way out of our dilemma. That type of writing, in fact, is why I gave the book two instead of three stars. The thing that I found most annoying about the book is the tone of almost condescending certainty that he displays about his diagnosis of and proposed solution to our present problems. It reminds one of the arrogance of the "academic elite" whose tunnel vision and blindness to other viewpoints has helped to spawn our cultural crisis in the first place.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed premise
Review: I question fundamentally the logic and sincerity of one who isurging us to turn our backs on culture and civilization, yet is notabove using the corporate publishing machine to get his message out to the masses. Publishing of books, reading, and education are only one aspect of our much maligned hierarchical society that would be jeopardized by tribalism. As for technology, there will always be those inventive types who will work and progress in that area, and the only way to stop their "evil" would be a holy war reminiscent of today's War On Drugs. No thanks! And early on, Quinn points out that the Mayans seem to have simply "walked away from their civilization". Perhaps so, but the peasants in their culture were far less integrated into that civilization than the average worker of today is into ours. Unlike the priests in the temple complexes the Mayan peasants lived in grass huts, and were kept in their place by means of dreadful religious rituals. If these peasants suddenly decided they would no longer shift the stones to build these palaces, it is understandable. The former nobles would soon realize they had the support services and labor necessary to live as they had been doing, and they too would abandon their cities. But this civilization was itself more tribal than anything we have today.
Rating:
Summary: Antidote for some other reviews
Review: I am a student of anthropology and sociology, and I just wanted to offer a few words. I am an admirer of Daniel Quinn, and one of the many reasons I got into the study of human society was reading The Story of B. I've also read Ishmael and this latest nonfiction book. I admire Quinn for tackling such questions, as few other authors of fiction have. I also admire him for his drive and vision, his almost childlike optimism (I mean this without any insult). However, be aware that his logic is at times faulty, and his view of society seems to be limited largely to the realm of economic anthropology (as in Marvin Harris, et al. who argue that resources are the *main* factor in societal dynamics). Also, I think that his view of religion, mainly Christianity, is oversimplified. His points are often excellent, but he simply overstates their applicability. I thank him wholeheartedly for getting people thinking about these issues. Just read the reviews above -- so many people will now be thinking about society in new ways! May I just suggest reading more than Quinn, if for nothing else than simply to get a more balanced view and then decide for yourself what sounds most believable.
Rating:
Summary: Mind expanding - if you're mind is ready for it.
Review: If you're looking for gurus with all the answers, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a clear picture of where we're at and how we got here so you can help to get us to a better future, then no one does a better job than Quinn in his series of books that began with Ishmael.
Rating: 
Summary: pure drivel
Review: It's books like this that make me embarrassed to have spent the better part of my life working in publishing. Muddle-headed thinking, disgraceful writing, pointless(ly trite) "Big Questions," and equally pointless, not to mention vague and simplistic, Non-Answers--all these make up the meat and bone of this scrawny dog of a book. Just who does Quinn think he is, anyway? Cioran? Nietzsche? Somebody--perhaps his editor, if he or she had even bothered to read the manuscript for this Cliff Notes version of Kultur according to Reader's Digest--should have told the author that aphorism doesn't suit him. Come to think of it, neither does rigorous thinking. In a word, Future Schlock at its very worst.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing for me too
Review: This book left me feeling very flat. I love the way he has written it and one page chapters are easy to read and the right thing for our short attention spans, but ultimately he just raises more questions than he answers. Then again, maybe that is what he strives to do. I guess the truth is that there are no easy answers to get us out of our predicament and we all, I think, need to take a good hard look at our own lives and simply figure out what we need to do to bring balance and functionality and awareness into the tiny circle that is our own immediate existence. I am giving up reading this sort of book. I really think our own answers are inside us, and we have to undertake the responsibility of figuring them out and acting on them, instead of looking for someone else to show us the way.
|
