Rating: 
Summary: Just starting
Review: I am going to read this book in spite of the negative reviews. I was drawn to it after watching a movie on TV called "Instinct" the credits said it was "suggested" by the book Ishmael. I enjoyed the movie and that lead me to the book. So here goes.
P.S. I only read the first page of reviews, not all 500+
Rating: 
Summary: Outcast or Lost Heirs
Review: Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. This book by Daniel Quinn has gone through several publications, and remains an underground classic. Quinn asks philosophical and ethical questions about the place of humans in the world and creates an intriguing perspective to make the reader ask these questions. He turns the roles of teacher and student, human and animal, man and nature, upside down and forces us to view the question of our place in the world by making us stand on our heads. The Title alludes to meanings with which we are all familiar. Ishmael, the first son of Abraham with his slave, who is later thrown out of his father's home, has come to symbolize social outcasts. "Call me Ishmael" says the hero of Moby Dick, who represents the motley crew searching for the Great White Whale. So who is Ishmael? In Quinn's book he is a teacher who is looking for a student. He is also a primate, a gorilla looking to share his wisdom and thought with a human willing to listen. Each word in the Title gives a clue to the subject. This book is indeed an Adventure, an allegory about the human condition and our place in the environment. Are we the intentional outcast who has endangered all other life forms? Who are we? This central question is explored in a series of Socratic dialogues with a perspective that keeps us always looking with new eyes at old questions. The questions challenge our Mind and the effort to imagine a dialogue between a gorilla, our primate cousin, and a human, engages the Spirit. This book is for anyone interested in the relationship of man in the environment and for anyone wondering about the relationship of humanity to all life. It would make a great book for high school and college students, who seem more aware of our perilous future as a species. I found it a unique and thought-provoking book; like having an interesting conversation with a stranger.
I rate this as one of ten most interesting books I have read. Daniel Quinn has written a sequel called My Ishmael where a young girl is the student who engages in Socratic dialogue with our gorilla teacher. He has written several other books on similar issues for those who would like to read more about these questions with an intriguing perspective.
Rating: 
Summary: Save the World- -Save Paper By Not Reading this Book
Review: This book is brimming with so much self-indulgence and egotism it turns my stomach. Quinn tries to pass this book off as a vision for the future of man, while slipping in a few big words now and then to fool the reader into thinking he did some sort of research. Quinn is obviously as in love with hearing himself talk as is his stupid ape. Let me save you some time and give you the bottom line--the themes can be separated into two distinct categories:
1) Stuff that is so sophomoric and obvious you wonder why he wasted the paper to print it on, all the while preaching that we are a wasteful species.
2) Stuff that is just plain wrong.
I'd like to know what clown college Quinn did any research for this book. My advice: read very closely the words "A NOVEL" at the bottom of the cover. It's pure fiction, with little or no benefit. Quinn's not an anthropologist lecturing you, he's an ideological man dressed up as a telepathic gorilla. If you're interested in a high quality book along these lines, try something by Jared Diamond instead.
Rating:
Summary: changed my life
Review: why it worked for me...
i don't really read many books on humanity. but i have many concerns and problems with the way most of the people on earth live. i am probably very uneducated about science and theories of life and religions and i don't know exactly how to describe me. but i think about this stuff a lot. i see and think about the problems i see in life, and how i think life is supposed to be and i try to figure out the meaning of life and all that but before this book i was never satisfied with anyone's answers to my questions. well, someone recommended this book to me based on my feelings about human life and my questions about it. and it was perfect. it made me understand the way i feel(which i think is a very honest and natural way to feel). it answers a lot of my questions and about the problems i have with explanations of the story of humans and life. it's very different from all of the other explanations of humans and life on earth that i've ever heard. and it's one that finally actually makes sense to me. because most of the others don't seem logical, like all of the religions i know. it explains why most religions don't seem right to me. this is all hard to explain. and that's my fault. but i want to say this stuff anyways. the bottom line is ishmael gives information that i've been looking for. and i feel like i'm honest with myself and very sceptical of people trying to give me these kinds of answers. and that a lot of people feel the way i felt. so this book is very important to me and a landmark in my life and it's changed my life, and i'm very happy for it. and it's important to note that i haven't done any research really on this stuff or know many facts on for example, when the first human like us is known to have lived. or about great philosophers. or about human evolution. or laws of nature. i'm trying to say that even though i haven't read much about the subject I still know (nothing) from good logic. and i don't think that fully researching all that stuff is important anyways. because it's all common sense stuff. and i knew that human life could be explained in that way. but yeah, maybe it's the lazy way of understanding these ideas. but i think it works fine. but why you might not like it...
it doesn't have complete proof for everything (no footnotes, i guess OR with these ideas you want very specific scientific information to back it, which maybe he doesn't give). everything isn't explained completely(i guess he doesn't answer arguements that many people seem to have, but maybe they just don't really understand, or are in denial). he doesn't really offer any solutions. but i think it's important enough to get these ideas out and argue about them at least. he did the best he could i think.
he seem to talk down to you a lot. he kind of repeats things. he says the same things in slightly different ways which can really be annoying when you get it right away. but i think he does it to come off as nice. and so that anyone can understand it.
it's really a bad story. it's more about the IDEAS then a STORY. he doesn't have a beautiful way with words or anything like that. there are no plot twists. it's not a classic book. but it's filled with very important information. and i think that people that don't agree with the ideas given in this book either don't really understand them or are in denial and don't want to understand them. overall it's not complete or the final note on this stuff. but it's great. and everyone should read it. and The Story Of B. and talk about them.
Rating:
Summary: Life Changing
Review: Most of us when we were young had a little voice inside us that told us things were very wrong in this culture. Over time we all stopped listening to that voice as we became more numbed out by the world around us. This book wakes up that voice and shows us what went wrong and how to begin to fix it. It is one of the most beautiful and important books you will ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: This book has opened my eyes to hidden beginnings and helped me to consider new possibilities for the world and my own life. If you want to grow beyond the deceptions that surround you this book can only help you on your journey. This is by far the most important book that I have picked up to date because it has challenged me so much in my search for the truth. This is a book for those who are never satisfied with the answers they recieve when they ask: Why are things as they are? Ishmael's words will inspire you to ask even more questions and help your mind flow long after you put the book down.
Rating:
Summary: Quinn wins
Review: Ishmael is not a good book. It does not even score well among unresearched presonal rants. People who rate Ishmeal as one of their life changing books need to read more; and people who draw comparisions to Socrates are giving Quinn way too much credit. Sure, the dialogue technique is similar but it is just insulting to one of the world's great philosophers to mention his name alongside this this peice of trash. The sad thing is that Daniel Quinn is the only winner in this whole thing. A $500,000 prize and great sales. And, all that for a little book he obviously didn't feel passionate about. If Quinn were really as concerned as he would like us to believe he would have given himself a voice, done actual research, and put the book in a format that would have generated support from the educated and powerful, not from the pseudo-educated who have fallen in love with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the strong of mind
Review: To those who proclaim that "Ishmael" is the most important book they've read, or those whose cover blurbs divide all books as pre- and post- "Ishmael", all I can say is that they can't have read a lot of books. Maybe too much MTV is to blame. Constructed as a Socratic dialogue between the narrator and (I kid you not) a brilliant, telepathic, yet mute gorilla, the novel embarks upon a series of mind-numbing exercises in politically correct logic. Which is to say, deeply flawed and vapid logic. Any well educated, critically-thinking person can find sufficient holes in the tenets presented that are wide enough to pilot a supertanker through. The dialogues, much as with Socrates' original, lead the unsophisticated, impressionable, and naive student into a morass of shallow, jumbled suppositions and half-truths that do not bear up to ten seconds of direct examination. "Ishmael" is not as hilarious or over the top as the "Celestine Prophecy", and therefore mandates the reader don a pair of high-top boots before wading into. I can see why Ted Turner liked it.
Rating:
Summary: worst ever
Review: This is the worst book ever. The author is too stupid to do the actual research, so he ecologically rants through a telepathic ape to avoid footnotes and the need to research sources.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting
Review: This book has a very interesting theme and keeps you wondering about your own life. It presents various philosophocal questions that make you think.
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