( Q ) Books

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

Daniel Quinn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 871 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Thank you Ishmael 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book changed my life.

Like a fish swimming in the ocean who takes water for granted, we can't help but take our own culture for granted. It has become invisible to us, because we live in it. This book will make it so you can see it again. Once you start to see it, you won't be able to make it become invisible again.

If you've ever wondered how things got this bad, you should read this book. Prepare for a paradigm shift.

Editorial Review:

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?

The Story of B

Daniel Quinn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 139 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Story of B combines Daniel Quinn's provocative and visionary ideas with a masterfully plotted story of adventure and suspense in this stunning, resonant novel that is sure to stay with readers long after they have finished the last page. Father Jared Osborne--bound by a centuries-old mandate held by his order to know before all others that the Antichrist is among us--is sent to Europe on a mission to find a peripatetic preacher whose radical message is attracting a growing circle of followers. The target of Osborne's investigation is an American known only as B. He isn't teaching New Age platitudes or building a fanatical following; instead, he is quietly uncovering the hidden history of our planet, redefining the fall of man, and retracing a path of human spirituality that extends millions of years into the past. From the beginning, Fr. Osborne is stunned, outraged, and awed by the simplicity and profundity of B's teachings. Is B merely a heretic--or is he the Antichrist sent to seduce humanity not with wickedness, but with ideas more alluring than those of traditional religion? With surprising twists and fascinating characters, The Story of B answers this question as it sends readers on an intellectual journey that will forever change the way they view spirituality, human history, and, indeed, the state of our present world.

My Ishmael

Daniel Quinn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael is an underground bestseller and a testament for a burgeoning spiritual movement. Now Quinn presents an extraordinary sequel, a companion novel so startlingly original that even Ishmael's most faithful readers will not predict its outcome....

When Ishmael places an advertisement for pupils with "an earnest desire to save the world," he does not expect a child to answer him. But twelve-year-old Julie Gerchak is undaunted by Ishmael's reluctance to teach someone so young, and convinces him to take her on as his next student. Ishmael knows he can't apply the same strategies with Julie that he used with his first pupil, Alan Lomax--nor can he hope for the same outcome. But young Julie proves that she is ready to forge her own spiritual path--and arrive at her own destination. And when the time comes to choose a pupil to carry out his greatest mission yet, Ishmael makes a daring decision--a choice that just might change the world.

Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure

Daniel Quinn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 144 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Futurist Daniel Quinn (Ishmael) dares to imagine a new approach to saving the world that involves deconstructing civilization. Quinn asks the radical yet fundamental questions about humanity such as, Why does civilization grow food, lock it up, and then make people earn money to buy it back? Why not progress "beyond civilization" and abandon the hierarchical lifestyles that cause many of our social problems? He challenges the "old mind" thinking that believes problems should be fixed with social programs. "Old minds think: How do we stop these bad things from happening?" Quinn writes. "New minds think: How do we make things the way we want them to be?"

Whether he is discussing Amish farming, homelessness, "tribal business," or holy work, Quinn's manifesto is highly digestible. Instead of writing dense, weighty chapters filled with self-important prose, he's assembled a series of brief one-page essays. His language is down to earth, his metaphors easy to grasp. As a result, readers can read about and ponder Beyond Civilization at a blissfully civilized pace. --Gail Hudson

If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways.

Daniel Quinn

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Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Authors, A-Z -> ( Q ) -> Quinn, Daniel

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Ishmael, Daniel Quinn offered new ways of seeing and understanding human history, and our collective future. His message was transformative for millions of people, and Ishmael continues to attract tens of thousands of new readers each year. Subsequent works, such as The Story of B and My Ishmael, expanded upon his insights and teachings, but only now does he finally tackle the one question he has been asked hundreds of times but has never taken on: "How do you do what you do?" In If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways Quinn elucidates for readers the methods behind his own thought processes, challenging and ultimately empowering them to view the world for themselves in creative, perhaps even revolutionary ways.

If They Give You Lines Paper, Write Sideways also includes Quinn's never-before-published essays "The New Renaissance" and "Our Religions." There is a scientific consensus that global warming is approaching a tipping point beyond no return faster than had previously been predicted. Quinn has long portrayed humans as "a species of beings, which, while supposedly rational, are destroying the very planet they live on." So what are we to do? There has never been a plan for the future - and there never will be. But something extraordinary will happen in the next two or three decades; the people of our culture will learn to live sustainably - or not. Either way, it will be extraordinary. The sooner we understand this reality, the greater the chances that human society will transform itself so that the human race might have a future.

Tales of Adam

Daniel Quinn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Ever since the publication of Ishmael in 1992, readers have yearned for a glimpse into a dimension of spiritual revelation the author only hinted at in that and later books. Now at long last they have it in seven profound but delightfully simple tales that illuminate the world in which humans became humans.
This is a world seen through animist eyes: as friendly to human life as it was to the life of gazelles, lions, lizards, mosquitos, jellyfish, and seals — not a world in which humans lived like trespassers who must conquer and subdue an alien territory. It's a world in which humans have a place in the community of life — not as rulers but as equals — with the paths of all held together in the hand of god.
This is not an ancient world or a lost world. It exists as surely today as it ever did — for those who have eyes to see it.
Tales of Adam, delightfully illustrated by Michael McCurdy, is a book that will come to be shelved alongside The Prophet, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and The Alchemist.

Work, Work, Work

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Work, Work, Work is the story of an industrious gopher whose lifework is to burrow from dawn to dusk under an enchanted land that he never sees. While he grumbles about his unceasing labors, the morning sky is spray-painted from a dirigible (and the sun gets a drop of blue in its eye), two UFOs from different planets meet for a strange exchange, an enormous octopus-like creature (who has just come from laying waste to Las Vegas) is subdued by a barrage of hats, hotdogs, and toasters, and, at the close of day, a window opens at the horizon so that a purple giant can hang the moon in the sky. Surfacing in the twilight, the gopher sighs, “Well, at least something happened. I ran into a rock!”
Parents will find that Work, Work, Work, with its colorful and detailed illustrations, is something different from the usual. It’s a book that brings readers and read-to together in a highly interactive entertainment, with the child investigating and elucidating all the strange goings-on that occur above the gopher’s underground travels.

Monkeys Are Made Of Chocolate: Exotic And Unseen Costa Rica

Jack Ewing

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great Storyteller! 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This book is a series of easy-to-digest short stories and essays by a good storyteller. Some are lightweight and merely entertaining, some are likely to change your life. Over 30 years the author, who was born and raised on the midwest plains, gradually turned a typical Central America cattle ranch into a premier eco-resort. By simply being open to what the land and environment were trying to do, some amazing and highly encouraging lessons are taught. The environmental future shown here is lush, varied, and hopeful. This is a bright ray in a field that tends too much toward doom and gloom.

Editorial Review:

Discover the mysterious and fascinating ways in which animals and plants—and people—interact with one another in the rainforests of Costa Rica. Author and naturalist Jack Ewing shares a wealth of observations and experiences, gathered from more than three decades of living in southwestern Costa Rica, home to some of the most prolific and diverse ecosystems on Earth. More than just a simple collection of essays, Monkeys are Made of Chocolate is a testament to the wonder of life in all its countless guises, as seen through the eyes of a man with a gift for subtle discernment and a natural flair for storytelling.

The Man Who Grew Young

Daniel Quinn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Man Who _Never_ Grew Young... 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 8 people found this review helpful.

...
...is the name of an sf short story from 1947 by Fritz Leiber. The premise and some of the details are so close to what is in Quinn's book, that it amazes me to see no comments comparing them, especially in the "editorial" reviews. I would call it plagiarism, conscious or unconcious, but I don't know if Daniel Quinn ever read or heard of the story. It seems just as likely that he never read it, because a concious plagiarist would have changed MORE of it! Sorry to say, the Leiber version's ending and philosophy are more thought-provoking than Quinn's.

It is a great story, and not rare or hard to find. Here are some or all of the places it was published:

Night's Black Agents, Arkham, 1947, 1961,1978
The Dark Side, ed. Damon Knight, Doubleday, 1965
The Best of Fritz Leiber, Nelson Doubleday, 1974, 1997
Beyond Reality, ed. Terry Carr, Elsvier/Nelson, 1979
The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction, ed. Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg, Arbor House, 1980

Editorial Review:

Daniel Quinn strikes again with this full-color, illustrated novel. What’s going to happen when the universe comes to the end of its string? Like a cosmic yo-yo, it’s going to start traveling back UP the string, to its beginning—and every life that has ever been lived will be lived again: in reverse. The strangest adventure to be found in this backward-running universe is that of Adam Taylor, whose epic quest through time cannot end until he finds his way into the womb that gave birth to us all.

Providence

Daniel Quinn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A New Level 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

_Providence_ takes _Ishmael_ to a whole new level by explaining what you can do with yourself after _Ishmael_. Quinn explains that the reason for this work is to fill the void that _Ishmael_ leaves: if it shattered your beliefs (in a good way, of course), _Providence_ gives you something to take its place.

After reading Quinn's first four books, this was welcome, because for me, it fills the void that _Beyond Civilization_ tries to work into, but somehow fails. Many people complain that Quinn never tells you what to do wth these new ideas in his books, and here, he gives the reader ways that he has made them work. I found it very easy to take them and mesh them with my own interests. To find out Quinn's entire argument for saving ourselves and our planet, it's really necessary to read his five major books - if you read this one last, it brings the whole argument together nicely. He just doesn't give you an easy way out. You have to find it for yourself.

Editorial Review:

Providence is Quinn's fascinating memoir of his life-long spiritual voyage. His journey takes him from a childhood dream in Omaha setting him on a search for fulfillment, to his time as a postulant in the Trappist order under the guidance of eminent theologian Thomas Merton.  Later, his quest took him through the deep self-discovery of psychoanalysis, through a failed marriage during the turbulent and exciting 60s, to finding fulfillment with his wife Rennie and a career as a writer. In Providence Quinn also details his rejection of organized religion and his personal rediscovery of what he says is humankind's first and only universal religion, the theology that forms the basis for Ishmael.

Providence is an insightful book that address issues of education, psychology, religion, science, marriage, and self-understanding, and will give insight to anyone who has ever struggled to forge and enact a personal spirituality.