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Summary: The Best Author Ever
Review: Daniel Quinn's books are without a doubt the best I've ever read. They have forever changed my perception of humanity, the world, and their histories. It showed me the vision I had been living and gave me a new vision. At least check out what Ishmael has to say and decide which vision you think is best. There are no books as important as those by Daniel Quinn. I agree with many of the other reviewers here who have said that. Please check it out for yourself!
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Summary: This book will change your life - REALLY!!
Review: I first read this book a few years ago and thought, "Wow! Everyone needs to read this!" Now there are two sequels, a movie, and a couple of websites and I feel even more strongly about this. ISHMAEL will change your life. It will give you a new perspective from which to view the world. Most importantly, ISHMAEL will help you find yourself in a very large, very crazy world.
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Summary: The BOOK isn't that good. The IDEAS are.
Review: I can understand why this book could be so life altering to someone who had never carefully considered the place of Man in the world. But as someone who had, and read the book with that mindset, I found the writing to be somewhat tedious.Here is what is weak about this book: The plot, the characters, the writing. Here is what is strong about this book: The central idea.
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Summary: Read This Book-That's All I Can Say
Review: Though the premise at fist seems a little silly (a talking gorilla) Daniel Quinn writes so well that you continue to read in spite of yourself. The research that when into the writing of this book is incredible. So is the humanity of the book, which challenges you to finish the book or to forever give up on humanity. You wil be forced to reconcider everything our culture has ever taught you. And at the end, you will be heart broken, but with a burning desire to live up to Ishmael's promise. This is one of the best books I have ever read.
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Summary: This book should be mandatory reading for all peoples.
Review: The ideas expressed in this book will challenge everything you have ever been taught. You will be changed forever.
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Summary: Is "Ishmael" for you?
Review: Daniel Quinn is the most important author of our time. We are at a point in our culture where we have brought the world to the brink of destruction and our own species to the path of extinction. If you don't care, if you want humanity to go extinct, if you want to live miserable lives, do not read "Ishmael". This book is for people with "an earnest desire to save the world". Very few people who come to Ishmael with this desire are disappointed with what he has to teach them and even fewer leave him unchanged. Some people are sorry they read "Ishmael" because "ignorance is bliss" and they can never go back to how they were. If you want to be ignorant and destructive to yourself and the rest of the world, don't read this book. However, if you find yourself thinking or feeling that something is wrong here, life is unsatisfying, and why do we have to destroy the world in order to live, then let Ishmael show you how things came to be this way and what is needed to make things other ways, better ways, satisfying ways, sustainable ways.
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Summary: Read this book, and lend it to every person you know
Review: Every bad review I have read on this book has been written by a moron. The points are simple, and repeated over and over again, and I can't believe that anyone who knows how to read could fail to grasp the message with both hands and build a new life around it. This book is about our cultural mythology, and why it is ruining our world. Humans will not be around very much longer if people don't stare this in the face and admit to themselves that the world was NOT made for man, that we can NEVER feed the starving millions, and that we won't solve our population problems by waiting for 6 billion people to start using birth control. This book is NOT about man or technology being "bad". And the reason the book doesn't tell you what to DO, is that if you have any intelligence level whatsoever, you can determine what to do based on the new (obvious) mythology that arises from the discussion in this book. A must-read. And then lend it to everyone you know.
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Summary: READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!
Review: This is THE book that opened my mind to think, unselfishly, about how I can make a difference and improve the world...for the sake OF the world and its inhabitants. I am absolutely amazed at the few who rated this book with 1 or 2 stars. Their reviews show such lack of spiritual evolution, they would never understand anything except gratifying their own demands. We are but one sliver, one part of this world, and yet we try to dominate, manipulate, and , ultimately, destroy all around us, just to get what we want. Start taking your proper place at the table of life. I have no self-loathing, as the writer who wanted to give Quinn 0 stars says. I simply understand WHAT he says, and why the rest of us need to spread the message and reverse the damage.
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Summary: The great-granddaddy lid flipper!
Review: God, where to begin? This book changed my life FOREVER. It just completely flipped my world upside down and inspired me to become the marvelous person that I am today. The synopsis covers the content of the book pretty well. Christ, who cares what he did. IT DOESN'T MATTER! It's what he SAID. He said that the Takers and the advents of society doomed the planet to destruction, but not ireversibly. He said that totalitarian agriculture (total agriculture. Kill off competetors, poison the land, break the food chain in half to make sure that the dominant one survives. For a while.) breaks the laws of ecology and is doomed to rock those it supports from their happy litttle lives to total oblivion. READ IT!
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Summary: Is this the last stop?
Review: I give the book 5 stars for the message, the plot is almost irrelavent, the vision is what's important. While Daniel Quinn did not write a book that tells people EXACTLY how to live he did do a very good job of pointing out some key problems with civilization. I find it sadly humorous what some of the harsher critics of this book are saying. They basically say Quinn is an idiot, which makes me think that the book really gets to them. Quinn is no idiot. What I would like to see is an online Q&A between Quinn and some of the people who rated the book with one star. They would be destroyed by a man who has been studying humans, anthropology, ecology and society intensely for about 50 years. I think people that say Quinn's points are simple and repetitive would be suprised to find that Quinn KNOWS THAT, the problem is that most people STILL DON'T GET IT. Also, Quinn never says anything about humans being some kind of disease upon the earth. Just a particular short historied,(10,000 years) and maybe short futured, type of humans,(civilized man) have jeopardized the survival of the species. Those who say that Ishmael is just another pessimistic look at the modern world that is great for other pessimists to read are clearly, well, NOT THINKING. I would like them to tell me that the human race is going to be okay for another 100 million years, and THEN PROVE IT. In fact there are some ecologists who already consider the human race extinct, just putting on the finishing touches. We are growing, out of control. Every second our number adds by 2 and a half. Every day over 200,000 people are added to our swelling population. THE PROBLEM IS VERY REAL, and it will soon prove the fact that economics ,as we use it, is an arbitrary system. There is no arguing those numbers. They are fact. And the scary thing is, the closer to extinction that our civilization becomes, the more it requires of us. It demands that we go to school at age 4 instead of 5, that we not only have to have a car, but a radio, a tv, a cd player, a computer, the internet.... Fifty hour work weeks instead of forty. Bachelors degrees instead of high school diplomas. Masters degrees instead of four year degrees. Oh, and by the way, what happened to our personal relationships? Oh well they are gone. There is no time to question the world, it will work itself out. Need to get to school. Get a job. Pay the bills. File taxes. Cut the grass. Go to work. WAIT! NEED TO STOP AND THINK. Or maybe not. Maybe this is the last stop. Maybe this is where the human species gets off the train of life. But MAYBE NOT. This is what Ishmael calls into question.
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