Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

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Summary: Dissapointing
Review: The book has a very clever idea, but that is the end of it's value to me. The characters are flat and boring and the text is lacking in subtlty. The author burdens us with self-rightous lectures making us feel like naughty eight year olds

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Summary: A marvellous book ! GET IT NOW!!
Review: OK so some of the science may not be up to scratch, who cares! This is a moral message about how man can live in the world if he'll only wake up to the idea that he doesn't own it! Thank you Mr. Quinn for adding to my very small collection of "must have" books. READ THIS......NOW!

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Summary: How can people buy this nonsense ?
Review: Having purchased this book based on its strong reviews I was amazed at how insipid it was. Bad science, weak logic, and poor storytelling together in a single package! This is the kind of book I might have thought profound when I was a self-important teenager but now amazes me at its popularity. Save yourself some time and money and buy something else

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Summary: Our jeremaiads ought at least to be based in reality
Review: I think the message of the book is laudable, it's just mostly wrong and based on incorrect science. Nearly all all factual stuff cited in the book is wrong. Quinn claims that his so-called "Leaver" cultures don't suffer from mental illness and depression. Not always true. The Yoruba tribe are more depressed than we are in the USA. He claims that no animal ever purposely ruins food for other species. False. Wild dogs in Australia routinely kill far more lambs or other livestock than they could possibly eat. He claims that increasing material abundance allows more population growth. False. Rising economic fortunes are probably the best birth control ever invented. Any species or population acts to maximize its reach and success. It's called natural selection, and anybody who knows Darwin knows as much. Quinn claims that different species leave room for each other to exist. False. It's axiomatic in evolutionary genetics that any two species which occupy the exact same niche, one will inevitably be driven to extinction. The book's most presumptuous assumption is that intelligence or morality can prevent extinction. Balderdash. The fossil record is littered with proto-hominid braincases larger than ours. Meanwhile, protozoans have been doing very well, thank you, and they have the intelligence and morality of, well, pond scum. Quinn mocks the old anthropological (a la Childe) notion of the noble savage, yet with his Leavers vs. Takers distinction, he lapses into a kind of neo-noble savagism. I think this is a fundamentally flawed and artificial distinction, and by far the most damming fault of the book. How can you follow the exhortations of the book if its propositions are so mangled and wrong? Which is a shame, because there are serious threats to our environment, and I certainly can't contest that many indigenous peoples are being driven into modernism, which is hardly the solution it purports to be. I don't know how to solve this problem, but I wholeheartedly agree it is one. And there are other, crushing problems like overpopulation and destruction of our environment, overdevelopment of the rain forest, the emergence of new viruses and new versions of drug-resistant bacteria, which all portend to dire consequences and which are all the result of our greed and insouciance. The book could have been far better had it got its science right. As it was, it left me exasperated. I'm bewildered that other people have failed to point out its copious flaws, first of all its editor

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Summary: This book will change your perspective on Man's role.
Review: "An Adventure of Mind and Spirit." Yeah, right. Then I noticed the review on the cover is from the Whole Earth Review. Oh, great. A tree-hugger on a spiritual journey. I started reading this book, and an amazing thing happened. I was drawn into this story about a jaded idealist and his gorilla teacher, and I could not put the book down. By the time we finish the journey, Quinn has recast the first four chapters of Genesis into an eyewitness account of the first (and ongoing) culture clash between those who would conquer the planet and those who would live in accord with it. "Civilized man" is depicted not as bringing order from chaos, but rather as being the chaos in an otherwise well-ordered system. He not only shows that we are speeding down a dead-end road, but also that there has always been another path, one which actually works and in which man's role is that of leader and teacher rather than ruler. One of the small handful of books that has truly changed my perspective

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Summary: Stand by for an immediate paradigm shift.
Review: If you are enjoying your climb to the top of the corporate ladder and the antics of human "tree huggers" give you heartburn, then you will probably find this story (containing a talking gorilla!) to be too silly and just not worth your time. However, if you are concerned about how Mother Earth is faring under the heavy blows of "civilization", then "Ishmael" may pry your open eyes even wider than you had imagined possible. This book is required reading for anyone who wants to change the world for the better. But don't expect a "feel good" message--there is definitely more work to be done than meets the eye..

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Summary: I didn't think I'd like this book...
Review: ...when I read the synopsis on the cover. "A spiritual quest" -- oh dear, spare me please, not another one of those New Age crystal-rubbing mystical treatises. But then I read it anyway. And now it's become one of those books that I buy for all my friends. A whole new spin on the Genesis stories, and a book that will make you reevaluate your place in the world

Rating:
Summary: Lucid
Review: Many have tried to deny our influence on the environment and on each other. This book illuminates how egocentric humankind can be. After reading this book, you will categorize your reading as "before Ishmael" and "after Ishmael

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Summary: beyond description!
Review: Daniel Quinn has shown us how to save the world - and if you read this, you to will be enlightened. Be Sure to also read The Story of B, and the sequel - which is set for completion in July!

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Summary: If no other book this year, read this one...
Review: Quinn not only writes a captivating piece, but one that tickes that stuff betwixt our ears. If you don't find yourself thinking more, questioning more, and changing your habits more as a result of completing the text, you're a rare bird indeed. As the review on the back cover suggests, I too, categorize books I've read only one way now, before and after Ishmael