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Summary: It gave me a whole new way of looking at life!
Review: I picked up Ishmael without having a clue as to what it was about, right around the time of the W.T.C. happening. I was quite astounded to have read such profound words at such a horrible time. But Daniel Quinn's views and ideas gave me a reason to sigh a big relief. I am thankful for this book dropping into my lap, now I'm ready to go searching for his others!! For anybody concerned with our society, our world, our ways--this book is a MUST! It shall surely be used for my teachings to my children.
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Summary: Among Good Books...
Review: Just beginning to read Ishmael, I thought, 'this may be the most important book written in the last, oh, 3 million years.' The longer I think about it, the surer I am.
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Summary: Now I know how Saul of Tarsus felt on the road to Damascus!
Review: This is NOT a book. This is a revelation. If mankind is to be saved, it will not saved by people with old ideas and new programs, but rather by people with a NEW VISION and no programs at all. "Ishmael" challenges all of our old assumptions about ourselves, our relationship with god and our destiny as a species. It should be required reading for mankind.
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Summary: Good messages mixed with bad theology
Review: Daniel Quinn had a lot of important messages to pass on to the reader about our culture and how we got here, and the dead-end road that we have taken as "takers". He has obviously done a lot of thinking and the book gets his message across very well. However, the book's real weakness is Daniel Quinn's misunderstanding, misquotation, and likewise misinterpretation of the Bible. He uses the Bible to put his message into historical context, but his theology doesn't fit historical facts. This book presents a lot of bad theology that only serves to discredit the book, and reinforce that this is in fact a fictional work. If one can look past this, this is an enlightening book that will challenge the way you view our role on earth and our connection to all forms of life on the planet. I encourage those that have studied the Bible to continue reading, despite the theological weaknesses, as there is still valuable insight to be gained from the book. Ironically, most of the book's conclusions validate a Christian world-view when you reflect on the book as a whole. I highly recommend watching the movie "Baraka" when you are done reading it.
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Summary: A Socratic Style Masterpiece
Review: This book is a quick read, and it takes the reader through The Step by step methods in building a brilliantly obvious and logical arguement for environmentalism. This is a book that everyone should read.
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Summary: Where was this book in my teens?
Review: First of all, this is the only review I've ever written (and will probably stay that way), but after reading this book I feel responsible for helping to disseminate this information. This might be the best book I've ever read. Whether you end up agreeing with the views this book espouses, you should nevertheless read it. In this day and age where debate and popular culture have obscured the true facts, this is one book which steps back from the confusion and offers a new way to look at it. The only downside to this is that you'll kick yourself for not having considered this possibility before. I am intentionally shying away from discussing the book's contents, as I'm sure other reviews will do; instead, I am more interested in making sure you give this book a try. At a little over 200 pages of larger type, it can be read in one sitting easily. I think that's what amazed me as well: that two hours of my time could change my life so much. I feel like a man standing at a doorway he just found open, ready to take the first step and see things as they always were.
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Summary: An Interesting, Socratic Book
Review: Ishmael, a novel by Daniel Quinn, is about a man and a gorilla that have a desire to save the world. Our, narrator, the man, finds Ishmael, the gorilla, through an ad in the paper, and together they discuss the story of the human race as Ishmael teaches the narrator what he must do in order to save the world. At first glance, one might think Daniel Quinn is trying to suggest that we all become tree-huggers, or that we all just turn around and give our neighbor a big hug. Even the narrator sees Ishmael's attempts to save the world like this at first, so we can easily identify with him. Meanwhile, Daniel Quinn plays the part of Ishmael, explaining to us what must be done and what his objectives are. Slowly, as the book progresses, we become wiser, as does the narrator, and we begin to see what the whole point of the book- or lesson- is. It may seem silly that the world needs saving at all, but those who laugh at the idea are only being naïve and callow-minded. Ishmael's purpose is to open up our eyes and show us just what is happening and what the facts are. The book's purpose is to teach us, as it is the gorilla's purpose to teach the narrator. Ishmael as a book and Ishmael as the gorilla can be used interchangeably because they both have the same purpose to us. More specifically, Daniel Quinn's goal is to teach us the "story" we are "enacting," or how we think we should live, how we think we came to be, and what we think our purpose is. By doing this, we see that our story is but a myth, and that we do not follow the basic laws of living, which all other living things do. We see that we are the Takers of the earth, and are in fact more primitive than the Leavers, who take only what they need and leave the rest to the earth. We see that we, the Takers, are the first species to defy the laws of living, and that if we continue to do so, we will all surely perish, taking down many more species with us. Daniel Quinn directly states the solution to this problem: We must start following the laws of living. However, in order to do so, we must first be aware the problem exists, and that is, again, the purpose of Ishmael. Throughout the novel, Daniel Quinn refers to the Bible. The Bible can basically be used to metaphorically mirror the Taker story as a whole. Ishmael suggests that the Bible was in fact written by the Leavers, as a documentation of the Taker story to pass on to the Leaver children. Of course, it is told that when the Takers found it, they misinterpreted it to make themselves think that they were in fact the people favored by God. Actually, the Leavers meant for the Bible to show the Takers as the "bad guys" because they had eaten from the tree of the gods, and therefore thought that they had the knowledge of the gods, which is that of who should live and who should die. It is for that reason that the Takers do not follow the laws of living. They constantly demonstrate their power by defying Mother Nature and the gods. The messages are all around us. We, the Takers, believe the earth belongs to us and that we must conquer it, but actually the opposite is true; we belong to the earth. Daniel Quinn refers to Genesis during the novel, and speaks of Cain and Able, Cain being the Takers who are murdering the Leavers, Able, at the time of the agricultural revolution. Daniel Quinn uses helpful timelines and maps to show us where, when, and how the agricultural revolution took place (or how it started). These timelines and maps include many labels and are crucial to understanding the book to someone who does not have good knowledge of the agricultural revolution, which would be a majority of the population. Daniel Quinn presents these graphics, and the book as a whole, very well. He is obviously a talented writer and public speaker, and seems to be enthralled by his subjects. This is evident because of the mass amount of material he has produced about it, a lot of which is free and can be found at his website, www.ishmael.com. I believe Daniel Quinn's intent is really to save the world, and if he makes a lot of money doing it, then that's all the more better for him. Daniel Quinn accomplished his goal with me in my opinion with flying colors. I truly am a changed person now, and it's hard for me to believe that something like that could happen so fast. In just 263 pages, or 4 hours, a book has completely transformed me. In a very Socratic manner, Daniel Quinn has written a powerful book. It is not emotionally powerful, but mentally it is extremely stimulating. It made me at times want to jump out of my chair and say, "Oh my God!" because of it's cleverness, and because I realized just how ignorant I was being before I read the novel. This book is essential. It should be a required reading material in schools. Nothing else, but perhaps Atlas Shrugged, by Ann Rand, comes close to Ishmael in terms of teaching moral values in an entertaining and captivating way. I recommend this book to everyone who is old enough to understand most of the vocabulary used in it. Although some people will have trouble getting into the story for the first 70 or so pages, it is definitely worth your patients to read the whole book. This book should not be passed up. It truly is an adventure of the mind and spirit.
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Summary: Review of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael
Review: The author's intent in writing Ishmael is to show mankind what it is, were it's going, and what will become of it. Here is a theoretical situation similar to one posed in the book, but more inclusive of the book as a whole than the similar situation posed in the book: A man jumps off a cliff with feathers glued to his arms as wings and begins to flap his arms up and down repeatedly. Initially the flight is a success. He is in the air, free as a bird, and is not dead. He begins to fall, and he notices this, but continues to flap. His wings have worked well up to this point, why should they let him down now? He notices he is falling at a faster rate. This alarms him, but he continues flapping his wings. His wings have gotten him this far, free of harm, and will presumably continue to do so. He flaps until the inevitable end. Why did the man fall? As we all know, this is because gravity kept him down. Does this mean that the moral of this story is that you can't fly? Is flight impossible? No, in order to fly you must follow the laws of aerodynamics. In order to fly you must follow the rules of flying. The question is, are there laws that state we must live a certain way, or perish like the feathered man? Is there a law of life, like the law of gravity? If so, then is man complying with these rules, and if man is not complying with these rules, will man surely perish? If man is not complying with these theoretical rules, is there still hope for man? Has man already jumped off the cliff, and is simply in a long fall, that will inevitably end in disaster? Now let us give mankind something the feathered man did not have, a parachute. Mankind's parachute would be a to change it's lifestyle to follow the rules of life, the way giving the flying man a parachute would not break the laws of flight, but comply with them. The only question remaining is whether or not man will choose to use the parachute, or ignore reason and choose the inevitable crash. Man is nothing special, it is destroying the Earth, and it will, in destroying the Earth, destroy itself. The author's intent in writing the book is to convince us of this. The author goes about his task by first establishing an outside view of humanity. He does this by giving a semi-logical, somewhat fantastical explanation for a one of a kind super intelligent gorilla. The gorilla provides the viewpoint of what someone not human would make of humanity. . The gorilla comes to the same conclusion the author has about mankind, and in an odd sense is the author. Yet, the book is written from the first person point of view of a pupil of the gorilla, which is also the author. What the book appears to be is a man talking to his self. The gorilla is the author looking at the world as though he were an alien seeing it for the first time. The pupil is the author as though he had never made these revelations, and had only suspected them. The author is still trying to convince himself of his own viewpoint. We are invited to watch this struggle, and in watching it, be taught along with the author. The author makes the struggle we are watching seem real through an enormous amount of dialogue. In the dialogue we see the pupil as human. He doesn't always get what Ishmael is saying, and neither does the reader. The pupil will ask Ishmael to explain, which also helps the reader understand. It makes the reader relate with the pupil. The dialogue is very well written and is accompanied by an occasional map or timeline that the pupil also sees. In crafting this novel the author shows a situation, analyzes it and explains it. This is repeated for small problems that all tie together to answer a few questions about life at the end of the book. No information given is irrelevant to the outcome of the book. The problems are usually explained through deconstruction of human beliefs, and no belief is spared. Both Christianity and evolution are picked apart until they are shown as telling the same story. The author groups all human beliefs into the same simple views of mankind. Through all of these measures of writing the author crafts a finely worded, elaborate and thought provoking story. This book is a successful adventure in further understanding the human spirit. The author successfully persuaded me of his point of view on what humanity is, how it became what it is, and where it is going. At times the opinions of the book angered me, but it was always followed by a logical explanation for the opinion. The opinion would then make sense and the anger would disappear. Eventually I was left with a sense of enlightenment, as though I was privileged to have read this book. This book definitely needed to be written. Hopefully more people will read it and realize what the book forces you to realize: that if man keeps on living the way it is, it will destroy itself, and possibly the Earth with it. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It is a great book that dares to explain humanity and it's chosen faults. This book proves its point without once seeming preachy. It is entertaining and thought provoking. Read this book.
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Summary: The place to start for those lost
Review: As the age of man controling the earth's resourses continues, it has been my observation that many people do care about what will happen to our home. However, most don't know what to do about it. They know recycling and watching there waste is good, but its not enough. What about those who ignore it completely. And, what about those at the other end of the spectrum, the tree-huggers who only defense is, "It has a right to be here too!" Well, I (in my great position of power) would recommend this book to all of them. If you want to knwo why things came to be this way, then the answers are here. Most importantly, they are not given to you as the gospel. The evidence is all there in this book. What you do after you read this book is up to you.
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Summary: If you haven't read this book, do so NOW!
Review: Hmmm, where do I begin?! A friend of mine recommended Ishmael during a conversation, so on Tuesday (8/14/01) I picked it up. I couldn't put it down! I finally finished it (while taking care of my two kids) shortly after my sons went to bed, and I haven't been the same since. Never in my life has one day changed my perception of everything. You owe it not only to yourself, but to the rest of the world - to your children and any children you know - to read this book. And don't just read it as a story, read it as OUR story. We are all looking for answers - I know I always am - and we all feel so out of place. Well, once you put down this book, if you truly let it take you inside yourself, you will know why. And you will be like me and want to spread the word - the vision. Please read this book and pass it on to others. All we have is at stake.
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