Rating: 
Summary: Saving the World
Review: One central premise of Ishmael is that ideas are to culture what genes are to an organism--the core ideas determine the culture's growth and direction. It's sometimes called memetic's, sometimes shared vision and mental model, but you won't read those words in the book. Quinn calls it story. Quinn explores the stories of our culture, where they have led us, and why. That's either the mind-blowing part of the book, or the part you don't get and think the book is a dud. If your mind is blown you come away with a better understanding of why we are more or less trapped in a system that compels us to destroy the world in our daily actions and why, if the world is to be saved, it won't be saved by programs like recycling, or birth control, or legislation to cut emissions--only a change in vision will work, a change in the story we are, as a culture enacting. When the book works, you can suddenly see our cultural story everywhere, transmitted in news stories, in advertisements, lectures at school, fairy tales, religion, songs. You become tuned into the transmission of our culture. When you can do this, you can more easily change your own story. When the book doesn't work, readers don't get the point at all. It seems a half baked noble-savage argument. They think Quinn is saying we should go back to living in the stone age, or they get caught up in Quinn's explanation of food-population dynamics, and they read into it things Quinn doesn't say. Sometimes they just can't endure the poor storyline. For all that the book is about stories, there is little storyline in this book. Quinn's storytelling improves in Ishmael's sequels Story of B, or My Ishmael. Quinn did a better job with them. Quinn particularly shines when telling parables, and you will find more of these in his latter books. Taken individually, Quinn's ideas are not really new. Most of what he says has been said better by others. Quinn's genius isn't so much in presenting new ideas, but in drawing connections between existing ideas. It's the connections that are new. Some criticize Quinn for not covering the details of the ideas themselves, but those details can be found in his sources. Quinn keeps a list of the books he read in preparing to write his own on his web site... For those with an earnest desire to save the world, Ishmael is just a beginning.
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Summary: The Bars of the Cage Revealed!
Review: Back in the 60's and 70's people wanted to be free of all the things in our culture that kept them trapped in lives they just didn't like. Unfortunately, they gave up and decided to work in the prison industries of our culture. A lot of us still yearn to be free. Daniel Quinn has said that part of his task in writing this book was to show the counter-culture the bars of the cage. They new they were in some sense captive. But they didn't know what it was that made them so. Ishmael reveals the bars! The book is not written as a philosophical treatise meant to be critiqued with every method of critical analysis and logic. Even so, you can verify all Quinn's evidence for yourself by spending a couple days in a good library. A lot of people look for things in Ishmael to disagree with or prove wrong. I don't think there's a whole lot in Ishmael that CAN be proven wrong. What I think people do is twist Quinn's words around so that they can argue against things he never really said but that some people might get the impression that he said in the book. There is also a huge misconception about Quinn's ideas on food production and population growth. What he really says can be found on his website in the speech "Reaching for the Future With All Three Hands" and in his videos with biologist Dr. Alan Thornhill. Ishmael is a book that re-arranges the way you think about history, religion, and just about everything else. It's used in thousands of classrooms all over the world. It's that good a book. Don't wait, read it now!
Rating: 
Summary: False Analogy Part Deux
Review: First off, does the book deserve 1 star? In my humble opinion no it does not. It deserves maybe 3. Why only the one? Shear force of weight. I am simply trying to be somewhat of a counter balance. I approached this book expecting great things or at least substantial things. And let us begin and end there. No substance. Many arguments are arguments of False Analogy, but there are other fallacies in there too. False Dichotomy, Begging the Question, False Cause, Hasty Generalization... Just to name a few. I urge you to look up the definitions of these fallacies and then reread the book. The book appeals to common sense, elucidated via analogy. Unfortunately the analogies themselves are flawed. I want so much to embrace a proverbial smack down on pop culture, but this book does not even begin to give real ammunition to do so. Many things in this book are over simplified. And there is an air of absolutism, but this is somewhat begging the question; what mechanism does one use to discern the absolute nature of what Ishmael is teaching? Do we use the "myth" of "Mother Culture" to absolutely discern the flaws of "Mother Culture"? The same mechanism we used to create this culture is the mechanism we are appealing to to dismiss it. Perhaps the method is flawed. Maybe we weren't asking the right questions. Maybe the sum of our knowledge is incomplete and thus appealing to known laws, like gravity, is incomplete. This book is food for the masses. To question just one simple Ishmael analogy. If building civilization out of accordance with the Natural Law of Competition is parallel to attempting to defy the Law of Gravity, then by following the analogy thus are there corollary Laws in civilization to the Laws of Aerodynamics which allow us to circumvent the Law of Gravity. If modern civilization is akin to a non flight worthy aircraft what represents the pilot? What represents the controls? Who built the machine? Based on what model? What represents the cliff we jumped off of? Are some cliffs bigger than others? What is the exact force that is propelling us to which analogous ground? What is the amount of energy produced from the collision between our non flight worthy craft and the proverbial ground? What is the proverbial ground? Now maybe your immediate reaction is that I am picking nits. I agree. That is the problem with analogy though. For elucidation great, but you can't base an argument on analogy without embracing the whole analogy. We need more substance. We need more reliable methods of achieving answers. I love every chance to bash cultural myth, but I need more meat than this. Also the book mentions a reference to Zero Sum Economics, fallacy. In economics if I take more it does not mean less for others. Wealth is created not merely existing and redistributed. Remember all you people who claim to love it. You are basically making the same argument that Scrooge was making in Dickens. "Why not let them starve and decrease the surplus population." I'm not saying that's a bad idea. I'm just saying if you wanted to beat up Scrooge so he could smell the festive truth of humanity when you read or saw A Christmas Carol then try to be at least a little consistent. And for those of you who say Quinn was not saying that. pg 138 "...Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point at which it can be supported by it's own resources..." Allowed to decline means starving to death.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but far from perfect
Review: Like some others in here, I would actually rate this book a 3 or 4, but since when I check out a book one of the first things I read are the negative reviews, I thought I'd throw my $.02 in here. For those who insist that this book "doesn't back up assumptions with facts" or that it's "just another new age diatribe" I'd suggest following up a reading of Ishmael with Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" which not only won a Pulitzer, but backs up nearly everthing Quinn postulates about "how things came to be this way."
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Summary: Return to the cave----
Review: You may love it or hate it, but I guarantee you will find this unusual book interesting---some have said life-changing!! A student applies for a course advertised for those with "an earnest desire to save the world." It develops that the instructor is a 1000 pound, telepathic gorilla named Ishmael! (for realism, I suppose----NOBODY would believe a gorilla that could TALK!) The book, and the course, could be subtitled "How things came to be this way." The gorilla expounds at length on that subject by dividing all humanity into two groups: Civilized, and primitive, which he promptly renames "takers" and "leavers," in order to avoid any "heavy connotations" that might be associated with "civilized" and "primitive"! I'm sure you can already see exactly where it's going! The "course of study" analyzes the history of mankind since the agricultural revolution, with the underlying, unchallenged assumption that we are now on the verge of total ecological disaster, and how this came about as a result of the vigorous activities of the civilized "takers" to "conquer the world." The inherent superiority of the primitive "leavers" is explained, and their vicious elimination by the takers is asserted, without any challenge or any factual support----it's just stated as well-recognized fact. EVERYTHING asserted telepathically by Ishmael, the gorilla, is readily accepted by the student, who of course is there to begin with because of his earnest desire to "save the world"----and a foregone conclusion that the world urgently NEEDS to be saved from impending disaster! For a view that differs from Ishmael's liberal/conventional orthodoxy on that point, take a look at "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomberg. Published in 2001, it challenges environmentalist forecasts of disaster, and demonstrates how they are based on erroneous or outright false interpretations of data, and explains why such errors persist. It's a VERY scholarly work, FULL of data and analysis, but most any serious reader will "get it!" For anyone with curiosity about the full agenda of the whackiest of the environmental whackos, Ishmael is a must-read!! If you doubt that what some REALLY yearn for is a return to the cave, this book will convince you!! I HIGHLY recommend it!!
Rating: 
Summary: Alright
Review: This book was an OK book. it had some great ideas in it, such as distributing condoms instead of just food, to really help with the population problem. But in general i found Ishmael a bit dull. There was absolutely no plot. For a novel documenting the dialogue between a monkey and a man, you'd think there might be some action somewhere in the book. Nope. The guy goes into a bar and nothing happens! Just when you hope some new characters will be introduced. While my friends all seem to love this book, they have a higher tolerance for boring things and seem to like 'classics'. Instead of picking this up, i recommend reading Thom Hartmann's "The last hours of ancient sunlight" for some real inspiration and education
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Summary: This book WILL change your life!!
Review: If you have an open mind and a good heart, this book WILL change your life. Quinn writes with such passion and enthusiasm for his topic matter that it is hard not to think of him a a prophet. If you are truly concerned about our society/civilization/planet/way of existence, then this is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: What this book did for me
Review: I see alot of argument surrounding Ishmael on this site. Some people give it very low marks. I'm not going to say they don't 'get it' or don't understand what it's trying to say, all I can say is what this book did for me. Although this book isn't one of the finely written things in the world (and it never sets out to be) it is the only book that has sent my world spiralling into a brand new point of view. I have read all other Daniel Quinn books since this one and books that skirt on the same issues by people such as Derrick Jensen (also VERY good) but they obviously haven't affected me as much because I'd read this one first. Ishmael made me see what one of the main problems is with world and explained things to me that were always on the tip of my mind but I could never identify them fully. I haven't felt the confusion I always felt since reading this book. Personally, I don't have a problem with the style of the gorilla talking to the man but I guess other people do. If this book affects you in anywhere near the same way it has me you should read the rest of his books (especially My Ishmael and Story of B) because you can see how he has evolved the idea over time. Anyway, I hope anyone who buys this book enjoys it and I hope it affects you in the same way it did me. As for the people who got nothing from it I hope you can find answers in something else.
Rating:
Summary: Can man exist without ape?
Review: My sister made me read this book, and when i started out on it, i wasn't as enthusiastic as i was half way through the book.
What i really appreciate about the way this book was written is the way the author put many aspects of life and the way we all have grown to live our lives in the eyes of one of the most natural species of animal. This ape that we come to love in this book points out how we are raised and trained to look at the things so one-sidedly. Read this book, give it a try, it won't hurt you, it can only help. Read this book and re-think about how good it helps to drop nukes on other countries.
If you like this book, check out the album called "No Code" by a band called Pearl Jam. Just think about it.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting nonsense
Review: This book, although presenting thought-provoking and somewhat unique ideas, also makes many very outrageous and unsupported claims. The main character just sits around as his teacher asks him crazy and ambigous questions which wastes lots of time. An example question: not exact quote s Teacher: What is your race's myth about creation?
Main character: Are you refering to the genesis?
Teacher: No. and they spend a page arguing whether the creation of earth etc. are just myths and eventually the main character agrees. Half of the book is just them dawdling about unsupported hypothesises. Many of the things that this so-called teacher claim can be found to be exactly incorrect when given serious thought.
If you are gullible or stupid and want to here what may seem to be revolutionary insights until you think then I reccommend this book for you.
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