|
by: Daniel Quinn
List Price: $18.00Amazon.com's Price: $12.24 You Save: $5.76 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780553375404
ISBN: 0553375407
Label: Bantam
Manufacturer: Bantam
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: July 01, 1995
Publisher: Bantam
Release Date: May 01, 1995
Sales Rank: 1800
Studio: Bantam
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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?
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - The Story of a Teacher/For Quinn is Just a Preacher
The story of a teacher seeking a student, but not just any student! You! In page after page, the author, speaking through his "teacher" in the form of an 800 lb gorilla, demonstrates his complete ignorance of even the most basic principles of population and economics. Quinn almost urges a return to the hunting and gathering lifestyle never minding the fact that this prescription would shave the earth's population thinner than the hair on a baboon's bottocks. If I had read this book when I was young, ... Read More
Rating:  - Life Changing Novel
I teach English at an inner-city high school and I wrote a grant to be able to teach this book to my students. It was my greatest success thus far and I attribute it all to the incredible ideas that Quinn develops throughout this novel. He challenges us to reconsider our concepts of humanity (which have led us to chaos) in order to find new ideas with more meaning. Needless to say, my students were engaged. One student said the novel saved him from suicide. Pretty powerful stuff.
Rating: - Thank you Ishmael
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.
Rating: - Original, Thought-Provoking and Intriguing
While I read 2 to 3 hours per day, this is not a book I would have chosen to read on my own (mostly because it is fiction). I read it only because an authoratative figure asked me to. I'm glad he did. I enjoyed the story and the insight. What the author, Daniel Quinn, has done, however, is simply to identify the invention that ultimately allowed man to build civilizations. Inasmuch as civilization is the cause of most of society's ills, the book challenges us to think about the necessity of civilization. ... Read More
Rating: - Step out of the box!
It is hard to explain but Ishamel by Daniel Quinn, takes careful reading and re-reading and is well worth the effort. It is not written with unfamiliar words or complex sentences, but it challenges everything you perceive as "normal" in our society. This novel is designed for people who are sceptical of the answers to big questions.
I encourage you to put the library to good use, or to purchase gently-used. The copy I borrowed is printed on recycled paper, on the back page, under the author bio, ... Read More
|
