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Daniel Quinn

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Ishmael:A Novel Paperback – May 1, 1995

by Daniel Quinn (Author)

4.6 6,496 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Ishmael Series

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Purchase options and add-ons

One of the most beloved and bestselling novels of spiritual adventure ever published, Ishmael has earned a passionate following. This special twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new foreword and afterword by the author.

“A thoughtful, fearlessly low-key novel about the role of our species on the planet . . . laid out for us with an originality and a clarity that few would deny.”—The New York Times Book Review

Teacher Seeks Pupil.
Must have an earnest desire to save the world.
Apply in person.

It was just a three-line ad in the personals section, but it launched the adventure of a lifetime.

So begins an utterly unique and captivating novel. It is the story of a man who embarks on a highly provocative intellectual adventure with a gorilla—a journey of the mind and spirit that changes forever the way he sees the world and humankind’s place in it.

In Ishmael, which received the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for the best work of fiction offering positive solutions to global problems, Daniel Quinn parses humanity’s origins and its relationship with nature, in search of an answer to this challenging question: How can we save the world from ourselves?

Explore Daniel Quinn’s spiritual Ishmael trilogy:
ISHMAEL • MY ISHMAEL • THE STORY OF B

Praise for Ishmael

“As suspenseful, inventive, and socially urgent as any fiction or nonfiction you are likely to read this or any other year.”—The Austin Chronicle

“Before we’re halfway through this slim book . . . we’re in [Daniel Quinn’s] grip, we want Ishmael to teach us how to save the planet from ourselves. We want to change our lives.”—The Washington Post

“Arthur Koestler, in an essay in which he wondered whether mankind would go the way of the dinosaur, formulated what he called the Dinosaur’s Prayer: ‘Lord, a little more time!’ Ishmael does its bit to answer that prayer and may just possibly have bought us all a little more time.”—Los Angeles Times

From Kirkus Reviews

Here's the novel that, out of 2500 submissions, won the ecological-minded Turner Tomorrow Award--and caused a mutiny among the judges when it was awarded the $500,000 first prize. Is it that good--or bad? No, but it's certainly unusual, even eccentric, enough to place Quinn (the paperback Dreamer, 1988) on the cult literary map.

What's most unusual is that this novel scarcely is one: beneath a thin narrative glaze, it's really a series of Socratic dialogues between man and ape, with the ape as Socrates. The nameless man, who narrates, answers a newspaper ad (``TEACHER seeks pupil...'') that takes him to a shabby office tenanted by a giant gorilla; lo! the ape begins to talk to him telepathically (Quinn's failure to explain this ability is typical of his approach: idea supersedes story). Over several days, the ape, Ishmael, as gruff as his Greek model, drags the man into a new understanding of humanity's place in the world. In a nutshell, Ishmael argues that humanity has evolved two ways of living: There are the ``Leavers,'' or hunter-gatherers (e.g., Bushmen), who live in harmony with the rest of life; and there are the ``Takers'' (our civilization), who arose with the agricultural revolution, aim to conquer the rest of life, and are destroying it in the process. Takers, Ishmael says, have woven a ``story'' to rationalize their conquest; central to this story is the idea that humanity is flawed--e.g., as told in the Bible. But not so, Ishmael proclaims; only the Taker way is flawed: Leavers offer a method for living well in the world ... A washout as a story, with zero emotional punch; but of substantial intellectual appeal as the extensive Q&A passages (despite their wild generalities and smug self-assurance) invariably challenge and provoke: both Socrates and King Kong might be pleased. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

“A thoughtful, fearlessly low-key novel about the role of our species on the planet . . . laid out for us with an originality and a clarity that few would deny.”—The New York Times Book Review

“[Quinn entraps] us in the dialogue itself, in the sweet and terrible lucidity of Ishmael’s analysis of the human condition. . . . It was surely for this deep, clear persuasiveness of argument that Ishmael was given its huge prize.”—The Washington Post

“It is as suspenseful, inventive, and socially urgent as any fiction or nonfiction book you are likely to read this or any other year.”—The Austin Chronicle

“Deserves high marks as a serious—and all too rare—effort that is unflinchingly engaged with fundamental life-and-death concerns.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

From the Inside Flap

The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "You are the teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?

About the Author

Daniel Quinn grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and studied at St. Louis University, the University of Vienna, and Loyola University of Chicago. He worked in Chicago-area publishing for twenty years before beginning work on the book for which he is best known, Ishmael. In 1991, this book was chosen from among some 2,500 international entrants in the Turner Tomorrow competition to win the half-million dollar prize for a novel offering “creative and positive solutions to global problems.” It has subsequently sold more than a million copies in English, is available in some thirty languages, and has been used in high schools and colleges worldwide in courses as varied as philosophy, geography, ecology, archaeology, history, biology, zoology, anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology. Subsequent works include Providence, The Story of B, My Ishmael: A Sequel, Beyond Civilization, After Dachau, The Holy, At Woomeroo, The Invisibility of Success, and The Teachings. Daniel Quinn died in 2018.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor. Since even this didn’t seem to be quite enough, I snatched it up, marched into the kitchen, and shoved it into the trash. While I was there, I made myself a little breakfast and gave myself some time to cool down. I ate and thought about something else entirely. That’s right. Then I dug the paper out of the trash and turned back to the Personals section, just to see if the damn thing was still there and just the way I remembered it. It was.

TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

An earnest desire to save the world! Oh, I liked that. That was rich indeed. An earnest desire to save the world–yes, that was splendid. By noon, two hundred mooncalfs, softheads, boobies, ninnyhammers, noodleheads, gawkies, and assorted oafs and thickwits would doubtless be lined up at the address given, ready to turn over all their worldlies for the rare privilege of sitting at the feet of some guru pregnant with the news that all will be well if everyone will just turn around and give his neighbor a big hug.

You will wonder: Why is this man so indignant? So bitter? It’s a fair question. In fact, it’s a question I was asking myself.

The answer goes back to a time, a couple decades ago, when I’d had the silly notion that the thing I most wanted to do in the world was . . . to find a teacher. That’s right. I imagined I wanted a teacher–needed a teacher. To show me how one goes about doing something that might be called . . . saving the world.

Stupid, no? Childish. Naïve. Simple. Callow. Or just fundamentally dumb. In one so manifestly normal in other respects, it needs explaining.

It came about in this way.

During the children’s revolt of the sixties and seventies, I was just old enough to understand what these kids had in mind–they meant to turn the world upside down–and just young enough to believe they might actually succeed. It’s true. Every morning when I opened my eyes, I expected to see that the new era had begun, that the sky was a brighter blue and the grass a brighter green. I expected to hear laughter in the air and to see people dancing in the streets, and not just kids–everyone! I won’t apologize for my naïveté; you only have to listen to the songs to know that I wasn’t alone.

Then one day when I was in my mid-teens, I woke up and realized that the new era was never going to begin. The revolt hadn’t been put down, it had just dwindled away into a fashion statement. Can I have been the only person in the world who was disillusioned by this? Bewildered by this? It seemed so. Everyone else seemed to be able to pass it off with a cynical grin that said, “Well, what did you really expect? There’s never been any more than this and never will be any more than this. Nobody’s out to save the world, because nobody gives a damn about the world, that was just a bunch of goofy kids talking. Get a job, make some money, work till you’re sixty, then move to Florida and die.”

I couldn’t shrug it away like this, and in my innocence I thought there had to be someone out there with an unknown wisdom who could dispel my disillusionment and bewilderment: a teacher.

Well, of course there wasn’t.

I didn’t want a guru or a kung fu master or a spiritual director.

I didn’t want to become a sorcerer or learn the zen of archery or meditate or align my chakras or uncover past incarnations. Arts and disciplines of that kind are fundamentally selfish; they’re all designed to benefit the pupil–not the world. I was after something else entirely, but it wasn’t in the Yellow Pages or anywhere else that I could discover.

In Hermann Hesse’s The Journey to the East, we never find out what Leo’s awesome wisdom consists of. This is because Hesse couldn’t tell us what he himself didn’t know. He was like me–he just yearned for there to be someone in the world like Leo, someone with a secret knowledge and a wisdom beyond his own. In fact, of course, there is no secret knowledge; no one knows anything that can’t be found on a shelf in the public library. But I didn’t know that then.

So I looked. Silly as it sounds now, I looked. By comparison, going after the Grail would have made more sense. I won’t talk about it, it’s too embarrassing. I looked until I wised up. I stopped making a fool of myself, but something died inside of me–something that I’d always sort of liked and admired. In its place grew a scar–a tough spot but also a sore spot.

And now, years after I’d given up the search, here was some charlatan advertising in the newspaper for the very same young dreamer that I’d been fifteen years ago.

But this still doesn’t explain my outrage, does it?

Try this: You’ve been in love with someone for a decade–someone who barely knows you’re alive. You’ve done everything, tried everything to make this person see that you’re a valuable, estimable person, and that your love is worth something. Then one day you open up the paper and glance at the Personals column, and there you see that your loved one has placed an ad . . . seeking someone worthwhile to love and be loved by.

Oh, I know it’s not exactly the same. Why should I have expected this unknown teacher to have contacted me instead of advertising for a pupil? Contrariwise, if this teacher was a charlatan, as I assumed, why would I have wanted him to contact me?

Let it go, I was being irrational. It happens, it’s allowed.

2

I had to go down there, of course–had to satisfy myself that it was just another scam. You understand. Thirty seconds would do it, a single look, ten words out of his mouth. Then I’d know. Then I could go home and forget about it.

When I got there, I was surprised to find it was a very ordinary sort of office building, full of second-rate flacks, lawyers, dentists, travel agents, a chiropractor, and a private investigator or two. I’d expected something a little more atmospheric–a brownstone with paneled walls, high ceilings, and shuttered windows, perhaps. I was looking for Room 105, and I found it in the back, where a window would overlook the alley. The door was uninformative. I pushed it open and stepped into a large, empty room. This uncommon space had been created by knocking down interior partitions, the marks of which could still be seen on the bare hardwood floor.

That was my first impression: emptiness. The second was olfactory; the place reeked of the circus–no, not the circus, the menagerie: unmistakable but not unpleasant. I looked around. The room was not entirely empty. Against the wall at the left stood a small bookcase containing thirty or forty volumes, mainly on history, prehistory, and anthropology. A lone overstuffed chair stood in the middle, facing away, toward the wall at the right, and looking like something the movers had left behind. Doubtless this was reserved for the master; his pupils would kneel or crouch on mats arranged in a semicircle at his knee.

And where were these pupils, who I had predicted would be present by the hundreds? Had they perhaps come and been led away like the children of Hamelin? A film of dust lay undisturbed on the floor to disprove this fancy.

There was something odd about the room, but it took me another look round to figure out what it was. In the wall opposite the door stood two tall casement windows admitting a feeble light from the alley; the wall to the left, common with the office next door, was blank. The wall to the right was pierced by a very large plate-glass window, but this was plainly not a window to the outside world, for it admitted no light at all; it was a window into an adjacent room, even dimmer than the one I occupied. I wondered what object of piety was displayed there, safely beyond the touch of inquisitive hands. Was it some embalmed Yeti or Bigfoot, made of cat fur and papier-mâché? Was it the body of a UFOnaut cut down by a National Guardsman before he could deliver his sublime message from the stars (“We are brothers. Be nice.”)?

Because it was backed by darkness, the glass in this window was black–opaque, reflective. I made no attempt to see beyond it as I approached; I was the spectacle under observation. On arrival, I continued to gaze into my own eyes for a moment, then rolled the focus forward beyond the glass–and found myself looking into another pair of eyes.

I fell back, startled. Then, recognizing what I’d seen, I fell back again, now a little frightened.

The creature on the other side of the glass was a full-grown gorilla.

Full-grown says nothing, of course. He was terrifyingly enormous, a boulder, a sarsen of Stonehenge. His sheer mass was alarming in itself, even though he wasn’t using it in any menacing way. On the contrary, he was half-sitting, half-reclining most placidly, nibbling delicately on a slender branch he carried in his left hand like a wand.

I did not know what to say. You will be able to judge how unnerved I was by this fact: that it seemed to me I should speak–excuse myself, explain my presence, justify my intrusion, beg the creature’s pardon. I felt it was an affront to gaze into his eyes, but I was paralyzed, helpless. I could look at nothing else in the world but his face, more hideous than any other in the animal kingdom because of its similarity to our own, yet in its way more noble than any Greek ideal of perfection.

There was in fact no obstacle between us. The pane of glass would have parted like a tissue had he touched it. But he seemed to have no idea of touching it. He sat and gazed into my eyes and nibbled the end of his branch and waited. No, he wasn’t waiting; he was merely there, had been there before I arrived and would be there when I’d left. I had the feeling I was of no more significance to him when a passing cloud is to a shepherd resting on a hillside.

As my fear began to ebb, consciousness of my situation returned. I said to myself that the teacher was plainly not on hand, that there was nothing to keep me there, that I should go home. But I didn’t like to leave with the feeling that I’d accomplished nothing at all. I looked around, thinking I’d leave a note, if I could find something to write on (and with), but there was nothing. Nevertheless, this search, with the thought of written communication in mind, brought to my attention something I’d overlooked in the room that lay beyond the glass; it was a sign or poster hanging on the wall behind the gorilla. It read:

WITH MAN GONE,
WILL THERE
BE HOPE
FOR GORILLA?

This sign stopped me–or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous. Did they imply that hope for gorillas lay in the extinction of the human race or in its survival? It could be read either way.

It was, of course, a koan–meant to be inexplicable. It disgusted me for that reason, and for another reason: because it appeared that this magnificent creature beyond the glass was being held in captivity for no other reason than to serve as a sort of animate illustration for this koan.

You really ought to do something about this, I told myself angrily. Then I added: It would be best if you sat down and were still.

I listened to the echo of this strange admonishment as if it were a fragment of music I couldn’t quite identify. I looked at the chair and wondered: Would it be best to sit down and be still? And if so, why? The answer came readily enough: Because, if you are still, then you will be better able to hear. Yes, I thought, that is undeniably so.

For no conscious reason, I lifted my eyes to those of my beastly companion in the next room. As everyone knows, eyes speak. A pair of strangers can effortlessly reveal their mutual interest and attraction in a single glance. His eyes spoke, and I understood. My legs turned to jelly, and I barely managed to reach the chair without collapsing.

“But how?” I said, not daring to speak the words aloud.

“What does it matter?” he replied as silently. “It’s so, and nothing more needs to be said.”

“But you–” I sputtered. “You are . . .”

I found that, having come to the word, and with no other word to put in its place, I could not speak it.

After a moment he nodded, as if in acknowledgment of my difficulty. “I am the teacher.”

For a time, we gazed into each other’s eyes, and my head felt as empty as a derelict barn.

Then he said: “Do you need time to collect yourself?”

“Yes!” I cried, speaking aloud for the first time.

He turned his massive head to one side to peer at me curiously. “Will it help you to listen to my story?”

“Indeed it will,” I said. “But first–if you will–please tell me your name.”

He stared at me for a while without replying and (as far as I could tell at that time) without expression. Then he proceeded as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

“I was born somewhere in the forests of equatorial West Africa,” he said. “I’ve never made any effort to find out exactly where, and see no reason to do so now. Do you happen to know anything about animal collecting for zoos and circurses?”

I looked up, startled. “I know nothing at all about animal collecting.”

“At one time, or at least during the thirties, the method commonly used with gorillas was this: On finding a band, collectors would shoot the females and pick up all the infants in sight.”

“How terrible,” I said, without thinking.

The creature replied with a shrug. “I have no actual memory of the event–though I have memories of still earlier times. In any case, the Johnsons sold me to a zoo in some small northeastern city–I can’t say which, for I had no awareness of such things as yet. There I lived and grew for several years.”

He paused and nibbled absentmindedly on his branch for a while, as if gathering his thoughts.

Book 1 of 3

Ishmael Series
Print length

263 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bantam
Publication date

May 1, 1995
Dimensions

5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0553375407
ISBN-13

978-0553375404
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bantam; Reissue edition (May 1, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 263 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553375407
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553375404
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #28 in Magical Realism
- #94 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #362 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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4.6 6,496 ratings

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Daniel Quinn

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I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and studied at St. Louis University, the University of Vienna, and Loyola University of Chicago. I worked in Chicago-area publishing for twenty years before beginning work on the book for which I'm best known, Ishmael. This book was chosen from among some 2500 international entrants to win the half-million dollar 1991 Turner Tomorrow competition for a novel offering "creative and positive solutions to global problems." The novel has subsequently sold more than a million copies in English, is available in some thirty languages, and has been used in high schools and colleges worldwide in courses as varied as philosophy, geography, ecology, archaeology, history, biology, zoology, anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology. Subsequent works include Providence, The Story of B, My Ishmael: A Sequel, Beyond Civilization, After Dachau, The Holy, and most recently At Woomeroo, a collection of short stories. I can be found on Facebook, and my Web site, ishmael.org, is enormous, offering news and announcements from readers, suggested readings, speeches and essays available nowhere else, detailed answers to more than 500 questions asked by readers over the years, and a Guestbook with thousands of entries. I and my wife, Rennie, have lived in Chicago, Santa Fe and Madrid, New Mexico, and Austin, Texas. We currently live in Houston.

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Richard Reese (author of Understanding Sustainability)

A Mind-expanding Book

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2011

Verified Purchase

I just finished reading Daniel Quinn's Ishmael this morning, for the third or fourth time. Prior to my first reading, in 1994, I had already learned a good deal about the problems of agriculture and civilization, so Ishmael didn't make my head explode. But when you're wandering far out on the wild frontier, and thinking far outside the box, it's reassuring to discover others on the same path. "Hey! I'm not crazy!" That's always a thrill.

Every time I read the book, I'm impressed by the depth of Quinn's knowledge and thinking. It's jam-packed with descriptions of many serious problems, yet it succeeds at remaining an inspiring piece of work. He doesn't serve us a complete collection of solutions, but he points us in the right direction, and describes the powerful monsters that we must confront and overcome. It's sort of like the course outline for Save the World 101.

Ishmael is over 20 years old now. Quinn finished it in 1990. In 1991, it won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship. It was published in 1992. Amazon.com ranks the sales of every book it carries -- over three million titles now. I've been tracking the rankings for Ishmael over the years. It was #616 in 2002, #663 in 2007, and #1,507 in 2011 (rankings are updated daily, and these numbers are U.S. only). It is a tremendously successful book. I suspect that it might be the world's best-selling book on environmental issues, if Silent Spring doesn't hold that honor.

In 1994, I was on a quest to find the elusive silver bullet solution to the Earth Crisis. The problems were obvious, and so were the solutions, but humankind seemed not to care at all, and things were continuously getting worse. This was insane! I imagined that a brilliant remedy lie buried beneath a rock somewhere, and if I searched hard enough, I'd find it -- the Holy Grail.

Ishmael did not give me what I wanted, because what I wanted did not exist. In fact, the solution was far more complicated than simply buying "green" products, demanding government action, or rounding up and punishing eco-villains. The solution involved inspiring almost all of humankind to make radical changes in the way they think, breed, eat, work, travel, communicate, dress, and so on. It's not a trivial undertaking, by any means.

Quinn wrestled with this predicament for 13 years, as the process of creating Ishmael meandered through its various versions, in search of strength and coherence. Thankfully, he does not serve us magical thinking or false hope. He never suggests that the Technology Fairy will rescue us via astonishing miraculous inventions. Our only hope is to change minds. But, is this enough? "Of course it's not enough. But if you begin anywhere else, there's no hope at all." Before you can address behaviors, you must first address beliefs and values. Is it possible that changing minds can succeed in bringing humankind back into balance with the living planet? Well, it's as "improbable as hell but not unimaginable" -- the BS-free bottom line. Since we have nothing to lose, and nothing better to do with our lives, it's worth a try. Nothing is more embarrassing than self-extinction.

During Ishmael's 20 years on the planet, environmental awareness has grown exponentially. The class of 2011 is far better informed than my class of 1970, which was tragically swept away by the consumer stampede, devoting their entire lives to mindless hoarding. Ishmael first appeared when there were five billion in the world. Now, we're seven billion. Storm clouds are growing. The road ahead is flashing and rumbling with danger. Many believe that we're gradually moving closer to the mythical "tipping point," when ever-expanding human consciousness will make a sharp shift toward enlightenment and compassion, humankind will move into a bold new era, a beautiful paradise for all living things!

But it now seems likely that the tipping point lies on the other side of turbulent times, and that's OK. Seven billion people simply can't fit into paradise, even if we switch to LED lights, ride bicycles, and feast on tofu and bean sprouts three times a day. The path to a genuinely sustainable future must pass through the collapse of industrial civilization. There are no clever ways to sneak around this troublesome obstacle. Collapse is a necessary component of the healing process, and it will be a powerful force for changing minds. When the lights go out, we'll remember what really matters. We'll quickly develop a profound hunger to become intimately aware of the place where we live, and the edible opportunities that it offers.

On the other side of collapse we'll come to a crucial fork in the path. In the 10,000 year history of civilization, there have been many collapses. In almost every case, when a failed society arrived at this fork, they chose the path of repeated mistakes. It was easier. They already knew how to mine minerals, forests, soils, wildlife, and fisheries. So they regrouped, did it all over again, and suffered the same inevitable results. Their primary objective was to die of old age. The generations yet-to-be-born were on their own, to thrive or perish by the power of their wits. Good luck to ye!

In the coming years, we too will arrive at this important fork of destiny. Will we chose, once again, the well-worn path of repeated mistakes? We don't have to. Many of us now understand why that would be really dumb. Heck, it might actually be fun to try the other path for a change. Our descendants would be so grateful if we took bold steps and freed them from the dreaded curse.

Quinn exhibits great admiration for the few surviving tribes who continue to walk on the path of sustainability: "They're not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other, not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not inventing a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make their lives worth living." Imagine that.

Richard Adrian Reese
Author of What Is Sustainable

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TLF13

This is a genius piece of literature!

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2023

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I don’t know how I got this far in my life without knowing of this book. My son needed it for a college social science class. Out of curiosity, I began reading it when it arrived and was blown away. This author is a true genius. This stretched my intellect and had me thinking in permanently new ways. This is the first book in a set of 3 and I immediately ordered the next 2! You HAVE to read this!

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Ravindra Gangadat

Diagnosis and prescription for saving the world!

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2016

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Ishmael by Daniel Quinn provides a diagnosis of what's wrong with the world and guidelines for finding the prescription for saving the world. The analogy that got me hooked occurred when Ishmael talked about how Hitler told his people a story about how the Germans are being deprived of their rightful place in the world by mongrel races, Communists, and Jews. He talked about how the Germans that disagreed with Hitler were like animals being swept along in the middle of a stampede. They were held captive and the only way to avoid that was to escape from Germany entirely. So, the human race is being held captive like the people of Nazi Germany.

So, how are we being held captive? Ishmael explains the origins of our captivity by looking back at man before the agricultural revolution, how life evolved in the world, and how we broke the law of life. They are two groups of people, the Takers and Leavers. The Takers believe that man is a biological exception and was meant to rule the world. The Leavers are pre-modern man (10,000 years ago) that lived for three million years following the common law of life that has been in place for billions of years. We are being held captive because the Takers believe that their is only one right way to live in the world.

So, how did the Takers conquer the world? The Takers used the Leavers story of Genesis to help conquer the world. Yes, the author said that the Old Testament was based on the story's from the Leavers and we've mis-interpreted the story of Genesis. The story of Genesis is really about the story of our agricultural revolution as told by some of the earliest victims of that revolution (the Leavers). So, the main difference between the takers and leavers are the following: the Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people through millions of years of evolution and experimentation. But, the Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things.

What's the premise of the Taker story? What's the premise of the Leaver story? The taker story is that the world belongs to man. The leaver story is that man belongs to the world. This means that the Takers don't belong to the same club as all other lifeforms in the world. The Takers are special and are an exception to the community of life. As a result, we are consuming the world and destroying other species - look at our population growth and the number of species disappearing daily.

Why should the Takers change the way they live? The Takers are unhappy with life and never satisfied. They don't know how to live. They are over-medicated and constantly worrying about not consuming enough things. The Leavers lived very well with other people and enjoyed life. The average Leaver only had to work about two hours per day and spent the remaining time helping their friends, family, and community. We don't need to return to a hunger/gatherer lifestyle to live like Leavers. But, we need to find a better way to live in order to save mankind and other lifeforms on our planet.

So, how do we save the world? We need to invent another story and reverse the story of Genesis. We need a captivating story that will allow us to convince everyone that we need to change the way we live. We need to learn from the history of the Leavers and find other ways of living that doesn't destroy nature. There might be many ways to live in the world that is compatible with the laws of nature. We just need to find them, invent them.

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tori

incredible read

Reviewed in Canada on November 20, 2022

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200/10 recommend this book. i finished the entire book in 3 days and my boyfriend who reads everyday finished it in one day, after me! neither of us could put it down… it seemed to be addressing all the same issues i myself have been wondering about in regards to humanity and society… a lot of things i have already deeply felt, were being addressed in this book. it was a very spiritual read for me!!! READ IT!!!!

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giovanni

Fantastico

Reviewed in Italy on November 29, 2023

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Un libro che tutti dovrebbero leggere

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Tania

Get this book, inmediately.

Reviewed in Spain on October 11, 2023

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I have only just finished reading Ishmael and I wasn't expecting -at all-to feel the way I do now. I've been reading non-stop for a whole day and its night and how could I ever go back to being the person I was nearly two days ago? That person that, since I've closed the book, feels thousands of years away.

When one does not see what one does not see, one does not even see that one is blind.

I had my suspicions and yet for 30 years I could not quite put my finger where it all started to go wrong. However, at last, now I too can see.

My eternal gratitude, Mr. Quinn.

Ana carolina Alves Bittencourt

Inigualável

Reviewed in Brazil on June 17, 2020

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O mlehor livro que já li! Engloba todas as inquietudes que temos mas são difíceis de expressar. A reflexão é constante quando entra nesse mundo de Ishmael.

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Michelle M

Gran libro

Reviewed in Mexico on July 11, 2019

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Gran libro, ideal para estos tiempos de caos mundial

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