Rating: 
Summary: it makes a great windowbrace.
Review: Brace yourself: The world is messed up, and it's all our fault. Human civilzation is destroying itself AND our ecology and something is going to have to change radically or we're all in a lot of trouble. Got all that? Good, you've just saved yourself a couple hundred pages or so. If you need a novel to explain that much to you, perhaps this one will do the job. Call me cynical, most people i know take these facts for granted, and have for some time. Books like this propose to be about the author's profound desire to use his higher level of consciousness to aid mankind in his perpetual search for truth. Problem is, this book comes off as being fueled more by arrogance than a desire to change things. Daniel Quinn doesn't want to change the world, he wants you to THINK he wants to change the world, so you'll take him seriously. But the ideas he has, the aspects of humanity he fingers as resposible for our fall from grace had me rolling my eyes so much i got motion sickness. I didn't see any of the profound insight into the human condition many others seem to; all i saw was second-rate anthropology and philosophical hubris. I rounded from 1.5 up to 2 stars because at least it made some suggestion of what humanity might try to do to redeem itself, and becuase it seems to have impressed a lot of folks probably more sophisticated than me. But, really, a character professing a way of thinking so revolutionary he's suspected of being the Antichrist? Take yourself down a peg, Dan. You're not there yet.
Rating: 
Summary: What is Quinn trying to get at?
Review: Story of B is probably Quinn's best book to date (I haven't read After Dachau yet). He is struggling with the conundrum of how we've managed to turn our feelings and senses off to the point where we think it makes sense to convert the diverse biomass of the planet into human biomass. Every ecologist knows that if you destroy what you rely on to live, you destroy yourself. It's a direct connection, though the consequences may take some time to filter back to you. In Story of B, he grapples with how monotheistic religions have gotten so buddy-buddy with the mindset that allows us to think that it's right and proper that humans should live at the expense of all other life on Earth. He does a particularly good job in pointing the root of human overpopulation of the earth. It's simple, he says: every ecologist knows that if you increase food production in a population, be it mice, cougars, ferns, or humans, you will be rewarded with a population increase. Intellectually, we know this. So why is it that we continue increasing our food, while at the same time bemoaning overpopulation and hoping that distributing condoms will do the job? As I say, ecologists know all of these things. So would anybody else who is really paying attention to life--not life as in that interval of time between your birth and your death which is generally occupied by distractions like school, marriage, career, and retirement--but LIFE, the whole grand panoply of flora and fauna, earth and elements, who share this planet with us. Quinn doesn't really know how we got so alienated from this knowledge, any more than I do. That's what he seems to be saying in Story of B. That's why at the end of the story, he informs the reader that having read the book, it is now your responsibility to continue struggling with this problem. If you're interested in putting some more pieces of the puzzle together, I reccomend The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry and A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen, both of which are undoubtedly available from this fine, fine website.
Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenal
Review: This book, along with the others like it, are a true awakening to what is going on in the world today. A must for anyone who has ever wanted to make a difference. It expanded my horizons.
Rating:
Summary: The Story Of B
Review: I was blown away by Quinn's ideas; well thought out and deceptively simple. Reading this book has changed my outlook on life.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: This story takes you out of your daily scenario. The bills, work, TV shows, movies, mowing the lawn, washing the car, dealing w/ coworkers, etc. are all locked in a box. The perspective of this story is from a chair in the clouds. It allows you to see the horizon. See over all the obstructions, straight to the origin. I suggest just reading the book and waiting a week before making any judgements. Just let it sink in. All his books have the same effect.
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Summary: Thought-provoking and recommended to all
Review: Having read Quinn's milder book _Ishmael_, I think he wanted to clear up any sentimental, namby-pamby, stoned-hippie notions of what he was trying to say. This book states his ideas bluntly and sometimes blasphemously, and makes it impossible to mistake them for harmless. I should note that after taking a basic anthropology course and looking through the textbook provided, it seemed to me that modern anthropology does not contradict and may support Quinn's claims. What he says about "Leavers" (that is, tribal peoples) seems to be true. They tend to appear happy and carefree, to share with and support each other more or less equally, to live healthfully and with leisure when undisturbed, and to cause little damage to the ecosystems they live off. They aren't angels by any means, and their societies are not perfect -- murder and war and rape and unhappiness and other horrible and distasteful things do exist among them. But that doesn't mean they can't provide us with a better and more realistic model for sustainability and happiness than we currently have.
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Summary: A thousand piece jigsaw puzzle before your eyes
Review: Quinn put a thousand scattered pieces I had in my head and put them into one incredible horrific jigsaw puzzle. The story is ok. It's the "public teachings" that are at the core of both this story and his purpose. We can't face the truth about ourselves. We have to believe that we are God's chosen, that which is removed and above nature. We wrote the history books, the bibles, the science books, the culture of human beings. It's all slanted in our favor and honor. Of course it is. How can we speak the truth without self-destructing as individuals and a culture? Too bad we can't face our place in the universe and upon the Earth. We're not so bad. Just full of ourselves. This book will shake you to your foundation. It will leave you a bit lost and empty. But what is lost and empty can be found and filled again. Intuitively I knew the truth before I read the book. A great thank you for putting it together so profoundly and so clearly.
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Summary: Forgetfulness, or Illusion?
Review: I think that Quinn's book is truly thought provoking, but that his solution is not feasable. It is true that we have not fully adjusted to civilization, but I think this is partly because of our innate tribalism. We have forgotten how to survive in the wilderness, but these skills are no longer needed. What we need today is to understand what works in civilization--one thing that definately does not work is one war followed by another. The question is not what we have forgotten, but what we have yet to learn. Our "fight" and "flight" response is geared for a jungle environment. Thanks to the genetic passing down of the fears of our forefathers, we have made our cities a jungle. What we suffer from is not forgetfulness but illusion. This works for our instinctive "fighters" for it puts them on a pedestal and keeps them there. The rest of us are like deer with the headlights shining in our eyes, making us immobile. Quinn's book was truly an "adventure of the mind and spirit," however, I do not advise getting our tommyhawks out of our trunks--this is not the road to enlighenment.
Rating:
Summary: Going back is the only way to go forward
Review: If you believe that we cannot shop our way out of inequality, injustice, environmental decay; that technology is not necessarily the answer to human malaise; that the way things are cannot be the way things should be; that more of the same does not mean BETTER, then the ideas in this book will make you feel that you were not crazy after all. Crucially, these new and challenging ideas will not tell you what to DO, or how to live. They will present a possibility. One that will go some way towards shaping up your original intuitions without trapping you in dogma.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautifully Dangerous Explanation of Our Culture
Review: Daniel Quinn's advanced learning tool for ideas presented in Ishmael once again sets fire to a spark found inside the hearts of those disturbed with the world's present situation. Not everyone will like this book although with creativity of thought and application to present day life, it could give direction to many confused and frustrated minds.
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