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Summary: Reading Quinn's series may make you irrevocably happy.
Review: Ishmael is the beginning of the development of an idea that will become a thousand counter-cultures. Ishmael alone will probably not make you ready to change your life, but it does provide a foundation of ideas that makes Quinn's next book, The Story of B, make a lot more sense. And My Ishmael is the best thing going to put you back together again after B changes your life. By the time you're finished, it is very possible that things that make perfect sense to you now, like working 40+ hours a week, for instance, will seem like the silliest things you could ever dream up. This is the kind of book that can do that to you.Just do yourself a favor and don't read just Ishmael without having The Story of B and My Ishmael ready to go. By itself it's just an interesting concept. Fully developed, it's potentially the most influential manifesto to come along in almost ten thousand years.
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Summary: A must buy !
Review: The most important book I have ever read. I'm no longer shamed to be human. We now own four copies to lend to others. Ignore the "story quality" and focus on the messages.
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Summary: Reviewing the Reviews
Review: Almost as many words from reviewers appear here as appear in the original book, providing a generous sample of reader reactions. Clearly it's a book that people either love or hate passionately, and clearly the author wasn't trying to write one of those books, like, say Simple Abundance, that NO ONE can hate. There are plenty of sharp edges in Ishmael, and Quinn didn't go out of his way to blunt them so that no one's feelings would get hurt. (There are even more sharp edges in his later books.) The haters generally justify their contempt in one of two ways. The first way is by charging Quinn with saying the opposite of what he's saying. For example, several reviewers complain that they're tired of hearing our problems blamed on humanity's flaws; but Quinn consistently ATTACKS the idea that our problems can be blamed on humanity's flaws; in fact, he insists that humanity is NOT flawed. Several reviewers suggest that he blames civilization for our problems; in fact, Quinn ATTACKS this idea as the unconsidered conventional wisdom of our age. Several readers charge him with resurrecting the image of the "Noble Savage"; in fact, he dismisses the "Noble Savage" as an idealization and insists that our "savage" ancestors and contemporaries are no more noble than we are. One or two reviewers dismiss Ishmael as "New Age drivel," failing to realize that New Age journals and reviewers shunned this book (and all of Quinn's books), recognizing that he is no friend to New Age sensibilities. One reviewer suggests that Ishmael was inspired by The Celestine Prophecy--failing to note that Ishmael was in print several years BEFORE The Celestine Prophecy (and that the two books are philosophically incompatible). In fact, if Ishmael embraced all the views that these reviewers charge it with embracing, then it would indeed be trite (as some say it is). The fact that Ishmael ATTACKS these views is what makes it most definitely NOT trite. The second way is by asserting that in Ishmael Quinn gets something "wrong"--most often anthropology, history, philosophy, or biology. What's interesting in these reviews is the total absence of EXAMPLES of things he's "gotten wrong." In fact, hundreds of university professors of anthropology, history, philosophy, and biology have used Ishmael as a text or as recommended reading in classrooms all over the world (in twenty languages). Clearly these scholarly professionals don't seem to think that Quinn has "gotten it wrong." Several readers charge that Quinn "oversimplifies." It's easy to pick out ideas that are oversimplified: if you don't like them, then they're oversimplified. People never denounce simple ideas that they like. In fact, in Ishmael, Quinn is attacking a constellation of very simple ideas that form the foundation of our cultural mythology: the idea that the world was made for Man, and Man was made to conquer and rule it; the idea that the world is a human possession, to be used as suits us; the idea that everything would be fine if it weren't for "human nature"; the idea that humans belong to a separate and higher order of being from the rest of the living community. If you happen to like these simple ideas, then you're probably NOT going to like this book (or any of Quinn's books).
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Summary: Brilliant!
Review: A remarkable work of startling clarity and depth. Ishmael dares to reveal another perspective of human history other than the arrogant and anthropocentric one drilled into our brains from birth. Ishmael's message is inescapable.
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Summary: Mind- and life-changing
Review: So, what should I say to this experience? It's the most important I've ever read. I read a lot, you know, but this one was and is different. It changes your life, well, mine in fact. I know there are people who can ignore what Quinn says about the world, but mostly this book changes everything. It's impossible to think or live on as before you read it. You should and nearly must read the other books by him and the ones he recommends. If you are at least a bit interested in changing this world, your life and our future read this book and then go on. I'm no lost teenager any more. What about you?
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Summary: Words Can't Describe
Review: I will keep my review very simple. THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE...only for the better...
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Summary: The Best Book
Review: Personally, I hate books. I hate almost all novels. I like computer books (I own a computer solutions company - Blue Media Solutions). This book was recommended to me by someone I don't remember now (I'm dying to figure out who it was). Anyway, I read this book about 2 years ago from a library. I was in AWE. I was amazed, astonished, shocked, ... I don't know how to explain it. This is a very good book... an amazing book... the best book... I just re-ordered it a couple days ago (got the book today). I can't wait til I reread this book, read My Ishmael, then read this one other book by Daniel Quinn, and move on to the finale, The Story Of B. I have no novel books on my bookshelf (its only technical books). These D. Quinn books will be the only ones on my shelf now. I strongly encourage you to read it. Help save the world. This is a passionate, emotional, yet very education and astonishly interesting book.
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Summary: The New Bible
Review: Do yourself a favor. Buy all of Daniel Quinn's books, read them and then throw away your Bible to make room for them on the shelf.
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Summary: Book for Reraders with an Earnest Desire to Save the World
Review: A friend of mine recommended this book to me in 1992. When she described to me the book's premise, a dialogue between a telepathic gorilla and a not-so-subtly dense man, I have to admit, I was not exactly eager to buy a copy. Thankfully, she persisted, and when finally she just presented me with a copy of it, I began to read... and read... and read... to find that she was right when she told me that what the book is actually about is something you have to read for yourself to discover. My history prior to reading Ishmael had involved efforts to address problems regarding the environment and social justice. I had always been frustrated at the conventional devices for change, never quite able to communicate exactly where my frustrations lay. I did know that my frustrations were rooted in a sense that what I was doing was having little more effect than trying to stop a dam from breaking by stopping up the cracks with tissue paper. I also knew that the changes needed were much more than any amount of political persuasion, noble savage idealism, scientific sequestering, philosophical masturbation, or religious transcendentalism could possibly produce. It has been seven years since my first reading of Ishmael, and this book's profound impact on me, my goals, and my overall cosmology has not wavered since, but has in fact increased exponentially, particularly with reading Mr. Quinn's follow up pieces, The Story of B and My Ishmael. In Ishmael, Daniel Quinn manages to cut to the heart of our culture's various ailments without resorting to any of the expected conventions of our time. The reason for this, as Mr. Quinn clearly illustrates, is that these conventions are as much a result of our culture's ill paradigms as the problems they occasionally attempt to remedy. But this does not even begin to touch on the depth of insights contained in this masterful work. Mr. Quinn synthesizes numerous schools of thought - primarily anthropology, history, biology, and theology - in such a way as to paint a truly all-encompassing portrait of how we got here. Most importantly, he successfully fleshes out the root of what it will take for any significant and lasting change to be made. The premise of the conversation between man and ape is more a metaphorical framework, a vehicle for the eye-opening ideas therein, than a device to provoke an emotional response. Nonetheless, one cannot help feeling a sense of loyalty and affection for the humorously smug (and rightly so) gorilla we come to know as Ishmael. And we owe a debt of gratitude to the book's fictitious narrator. His dense skull need not be taken personally as an estimation on Quinn's part of the mentality of his readers. It is a practical device that makes this book comprehensible to even those readers with little prior understanding of the laws of biology, the principles of evolution, or the various other foundations of this piece, and merely requests the patience of those readers who do have knowledge of such subjects. And for those readers who find this man's ignorance occasionally frustrating, you will find humor and respect in how Ishmael himself responds. At least, if you do not, you will find a role model for the patience you will need to develop if you wish to be a part of provoking such change yourself. My involvement and concern for issues such as the environment and social justice have not wavered either, but have merely changed their expressions... to ones more effective in the long run and with a deeper, more practical understanding and a sense of hope that I had not known before. Deeper and more profoundly mind-altering than any book on conspiracy theories, celestine prophecies, or back-to-the-woods survivalism - by the simple virtue of its depth and profundity laying in its unabashed stripping of our cultural mythologies - Ishmael is truly a book for any reader with an earnest desire to save the world.
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Summary: Please try to understand............
Review: This book is a good book because it opens up the eyes of the reader. It does, or should if the reader receptive enough, this in a number of ways (1) It alows one to look at our culture objectively (2) It proves that what we're doing is wrong (3) It should alow us to view philosophy in a whole new light ie. Philosophy is the attempt to answer human problms with human answers but has no real place in nature. like the picture of Nietsche pondering the drawing of rabbit/duck. It is not important that it looks like a rabbit or a duck because it is neither! it's a lines on paper. (4) It tries to make these topics available to everyone, and that is the most important point. That is why the book is not written brilliantly. That is why the book may seem slow and does not ripple with great new ideas. Hardly any of them are new, but they alow the blind to see, which is good. while i was reading this book i was not surprised by anything, but i was very pleased at every line because i finally had found a book that i could show others and know they would understand. There are problems however. Ishmael fails to explain how it could have been any different. He shows that every culture that did not use agriculture was distroyed, a fact, but it does help his arguement. We are not the descendants of the leavers but the takers. So it would seem, and i think this is the greatest fear amongst takers, that if we become leavers, and give up our weapons, it's not the wild animals or the hardships or the natural selection, it's the fact that at anytime a group of takers can come along and kill us all. So what do we do? that's the real question.
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