The Story of B (Ishmael Series)

the writing style simply cannot support the ideas in this manifesto. Eloquence is essential to delivery of the any message, and the 'B'(s) endlessly wordy messages seemed to dull the senses of most listeners, including the priest. Using the excuse that our message is so revolutionary that it cannot be described to the average person in a simple way is, at best, poor writing. At its worst, the whole thing may simply be a bad idea. If you want to feel like you were just run over by a bus, you may enjoy reading this book. If you are searching for meaning in life, it would be better to look elsewhere.

The book is very close to POSITIVISM (addicted to science). The core message is identical to Ishmael, "save the World or else there will be no Earth anymore". I disagree to his view to Islam, I believe he has not researched enough to judge a religion. It might be the same for Judaism and Christianism as well. His objection is against institutions of religious, not religion itself.
I see similar approaches in Entropy by Jeremy Rifkin and current environmental activities and awareness. Unfortunately western countries have exhausted most of the earth's resources already but charging the cost to other countries now. They are, in my eyes, unfair to demand the cost of preserving environment from other countries.

Choose your religious concept. Understand why religions were created (to fulfill a need in Man) and how evolution created the reality we live in now. Overpopulation, capitalism, destructed family units, far from being tribal our life style has morphed into a virtual reality, fed by the machines and gadgets we use. Humanity has changed into rational, linear thinking. The 5 senses are not relied unto, the body is controlled with substances, the mind fed important concepts not even necessary for our survival. Respect of the earth and all living things is animalism.
Totally ecological, organic living, Mr. Daniel Quinn's books are thought provoking, planting the seeds for our own evolution as individuals. They helped me grow in understanding. Each thought can now be directed at solutions, problems being a meaning of the past, when disgust or/and overwhelming feelings of helplessness used to dwell. It takes courage to reclaim your life, but it is the only way to live productively, happily.

Don't miss this one. This deceptively simple tale may be the most profound critique of agricultural civilization that I have ever read. It cuts to the heart of the experiment we began about 10,000 years ago -- the way of life which has come to dominate our planet and which threatens to undo us all. (See Wes Jackson's work, BECOMING NATIVE TO THIS PLACE, Counterpoint, 1996, etc. for an agronomist's perspective on the same issues.) B opens a window on the preceding 3 million years in which humans exactly like us lived, created, dreamed and invented without choosing to dominate the rest of nature, and then indicates a door through which we might exit our failing paradigm. This is the part of history you were never taught in school and might only have inferred from the work of Louis Leakey, Margaret Meade and other students of the "uncivilized" past. The inevitability of farms, cities and nations that is assumed in classic history is artfully shown to be anything but inevitable. It is also a good story. Whether you emerge from this book, as I did, convinced as never before of the imperative change demanded by the dangerous path we now tread, or choose to oppose Quinn's challenge, you will be shaken by this book. To your core.

An earlier reviewer wrote (in his updated review) "I have thought about the book several times since I read it and disliked it, there must be more to it than I originally noted." He then raised his review from 2 to 3 stars.
This, for me, sums up the power of Daniel Quinn's writing. He provides a new framework or lens through which we can see the world. Once that lens is in place, the world occurs differently, whether we want it to or not, whether we like the book or not.
Before the microscope was invented in the 17th century, no one knew that living things are made up of cells. Early microscopes were crude, but they began to make an invisible world that some suspected was there, visible. Quinn's books are like the early microscopes: anyone reading these books will start to see things that have been invisible (but suspected) in our world and culture. Instead of using glass and light, Quinn uses dialog and socratic inquiry. The core concepts--"leavers and takers" and "the great forgetting"--are the lenses, and the books themselves are the metal and plasitc and wooden pieces of the microscope.
In TSOB Quinn has several characters explain and transmit his ideas, each in his or her own way. While it may be a bit clunky, each pass makes the lens a little sharper and brings the subject into a little closer focus.
Other reviewers give a sense about what is being examined, what readers begin to see, and what impact it makes on their lives. What seems to happen, as happened for the earlier reviewer who has been thinking about the book, is that the lenses become part of us whether we want them to or not.
So please forgive Daniel Quinn for not writing a concise academic treatise or literary masterpiece; others will do that. But would they be able to had he not come first?
Read his books, rock your world, and maybe you will be the one to take the next step.

If you're the average uninformed American who is smart enough to question media hype but still takes the evening news at face value, who votes every year but hasn't heard of half the candidates on the ballot, who laughs at comic strips depicting environmentalists as tree-huggers, then reading this book is a good idea: you're who the author was aiming for. Daniel Quinn, with this and his other novels, is attempting to bring to light problems with Western civilization in a way that can be absorbed by those not in the intellectual/cynical community. Although the writing is at times sub par and Daniel Quinn will never be the world's greatest storyteller, the message is an important one to at least glance at; it asks (rather than forces) you to question your assumptions about our world and the way we think. The writing isn't fabulous and doesn't need to be: the ideas contained in this novel will be absorbed whether the writing is phenomenal or simply better than average.
If you're a cynic or someone who prides themselves on being part of the informed, intellectual community and are already very aware of the problems, arguments and ideas surrounding the collapse of Western civilization, you can safely skip this book. If you read it anyway and bashed it, shame on you: you know this wasn't written for you.

You should read Ishmael first, and then read the Story of B. It builds nicely on the basic concepts presented in Ishmael. There is a bit more of a story and the book's layout is strange. There is a section in the back that has the public teachings of B. This is kind of cool because you can skip the story and just read the sort of lectures. You end up jumping back and forth if you want to read everything in sequence. The Book is excellent. It makes some good points and goes further than Ishmael did. It really is one of those life changing books. It challenges you to think about the modern world. It does a good job of showing that the stock market and SUVs won't help to stop humanity from destroying itself. It does a good job of showing how relgion has aided in the degredation of the earth. There is also a very cool interpritation of the nature of the anti-christ in the book. Somebody with more religious convictions than I would probabally find this book more troubling, but I would recommend it to anybody. Read Ishmael and then read the Story of B. You may hate it (probabally not), but it will make you use your brain.

Quinn came up with a very different concept of what the Antichrist would be. I found this to be such an interesting idea for a plot, and I liked the story, even though the story was just a set-up for the philosophy. This is what Quinn does: inserts philosophies into stories to make them more compelling.

I liked the story and the idea, and while I sympathize with Quinn's cause (saving the earth and all that), the philosophy, particularly as expressed in this book, was weak and simplistic.

Although the characters mention the pitfalls of "angelization", they still angelized tribal cultures and embraced cultural relativism. Female genital mutilation is often held up as an example of the downside of cultural relativism, yet the character completely deflects this question by saying that it is only practiced by Islamic ("Taker") culture. That doesn't change the fact that FGM originated in tribal cultures, and that other things such as cannibalism (which was given as an example of a tribal custom) were/are also done in tribal cultures. It also doesn't address that it could be done by a tribal culture and the people born into the tribe have no choice, and under cultural relativism, no one has a right to question a practice. I'm not a fan of cultural relativism, but if you're going to promote it, at least be honest about what it entails, because it would absolutely mean accepting FGM.

The description of tribal cultures being completely distinct and separate, and tolerating but not really liking other tribes. A downside of this is lack of genetic diversity, as well as the fact that it's got some things in common with the visions of racial purists.

Another reason given for tribal cultures was "it works"; because it's always been that way for thousands of years. This is the same logic that reactionary conservatives use to defend backward policies; women have "always" been restricted to homemaking and breeding, marriage has "always" been between a man and a woman, etc. This idea that "since it's always been this way, it's meant to be this way" is a great way for not trying anything new, and if prehistoric humans had followed it, they wouldn't have developed any tools at all.

When it came to overpopulation, the characters were also simplistic about the relationship between food and overpopulation. If excess of food always leads to increased population, countries with a surplus of food (in America, half of all food is wasted) should have billions of people. This hasn't happened. The character makes some claim that it's a surplus of food worldwide; as if excess food in one country has an effect on people across the ocean. When starving children are mentioned, the character repeats several times that "people are made out of food" as a defense that everyone in the world who is born have enough to eat. Obviously a person gets enough food to give birth to a child, but there are plenty of starving children. Slowly reducing food is probably not a good way to reduce populations, because hungry people have been known to hunt endangered species.

The characters put down contraception and attempts at population control, saying the individual's behavior (one person using birth control or not reproducing) has no effect on society, when it is individuals that make up society. Birth control has worked pretty well in many of the countries that have a surplus of food, which means that the claim that only food shortage will limit population is not quite true. The difference between humans and the mice that the characters mentioned is that humans have the ability to understand things like family planning and birth control. Also, the experiment with mice and food worked every single time, but were there any experiments with giving birth control to the mice? Birth control in the water might have made a difference.

And of course there are the obvious criticisms: at this point if we stopped using agriculture, we would create more stress on the environment by foraging/hunting in large numbers. Our society is described as so miserable that no one would be willing to take part in it, yet the solution to this is vague; promote animism, slowly take away the food supply (which according to this book would be painless), tribes are good although there is no description of how to get people to form or go back to tribes.

This was a fantastic semi-sequel to Ishmael. Having read Quinn's first novel, my thought-process had already been stirred and open to his ideas. I understood the heart of what he was saying, as well as the logistics. I craved more.

The Story of B. gave it to me. What I found in this novel was a fantastic plot that I became increasingly engaged in as it developed - something I did not have on such a scale with Ishmael. Also, I found a deepening of Quinn's perspective/theory/whatever-you-want-to-call-it throughout the novel. I loved that the teachings were left to the end of the book, so you could choose to read them in context or separately. I chose the latter, because I was so engaged with the story and felt I had a good base with the philosophy, although I did read a few of them in context. I don't regret that way of reading, because I feel I got just as much out of it and then was able to confirm and tweak a few ideas afterwards while reading the teachings more thoroughly.

All in all, this is a fantastic read -- engaging and even more thought-provoking than its precursor, Ishmael. It was hard to continue with Quinn to My Ishmael, returning to the questioning format, after such a great plot.

This book is easily Daniel Quinn's best. Whereas Ishmael was full of interesting ideas but very badly written (the plot consisted of a clunky dialogue between a guy and a gorilla) as a story, this book is full of interesting ideas and has an okay story--a plot in which a lot of interesting things happen (though the dialogue still needs work). A priest tracks a speaker across Europe and is drawn in by his novel theories (Quinn's theories) about civilization, development, culture, and so on. The speeches which are collected at the back of the book are very useful to have all together. Which some of Quinn's ideas (for example his Malthusian "food supply increase equals population increase" idea) are weak and poorly defended (he defends this claim by asserting that his theory can't be disproved by looking comparatively at the U.S. and developing countries . . . but logically it can be), overall, many of them are fascinating, profound, and compelling. A great place to start for the newcomer.

This is, at the very least, an interesting book to read whether you end up loving or hating it, agreeing or disagreeing with the arguments. After reading some of the other reviews, I have a few comments. First, it is a work of fiction and not a historical narrative. Quinn doesn't use too much data to support his assertions, but as a work of fiction the story is just as effective in my opinion. I thought the two most interesting ideas the book offered were (1) the realities of the population explosion and how our culture is prepared (or not prepared) to deal with it and (2) the notion that the "fall" depicted in the Bible corresponds directly in time with the use of totalitarian agriculture. Some have interpreted the book as very anti-Christian, but I think his point is that "dogmatic" or "doctrinal" Christianity has contributed to our cultural problems. Quinn is not really criticizing the Spirit of Jesus' message (or the message of any other founder of the world's major religions), but rather the institutions that have been formed that don't permit a vision of any other way of life. Also, I don't think the book paints a picture of doomed planet as some have suggested, but rather a doomed CULTURE. There is still hope for humanity through changed minds (not, as Quinn points out, through more programs perpetuated by the same culture already in place).

...if you are looking for ANSWERS. If you are looking for a thrilling page-turner a la Thomas Harris or Tom Clancy. If you are looking for a scholarly essay with lots of bibiographical reference. I think one of the reasons why the first and last reasons above are not part of this book is because he is not trying to be some Savior With All The Answers. He is telling you what the problem is, and it is not what we have been taught. To know the problem more completely is to be able to figure out how to fix it. As he says, there is no One Way To Live. This is why there are no answers to HOW to solve our problems, only a very well-thought out opinion as to HOW we got to this point, as was done in Ishmael. I think this can address some of the detractions that the 1 and 2 star reviewers posted. So far I have only read ISHMAEL and THE STORY OF B. So far I am impressed with the amount of restraint Quinn shows in NOT telling me WHAT to do.
As far as some of the fictions (such as there being no "real" Laurentian order, well, there was no "real" Jesus either so we're even right?) and inaccuracies (Bau does indeed mean "building" and not "burrow" and yes I speak German), these really are superficial mistakes. They do not detract from the substance. These are nit-picky criticisms, and I'm glad they've been posted, but they aren't damning to the point of the narrative. Those who are burdened with the rather plodding intellect of the narrator...Quinn is not writing to the scholar. He is writing to the average dipswitch joe, who is the one most likely to be able to change something. Average people rule the world you know. Much of what Quinn wrote resonates with scholarly work I've been reading about the origins of religion.
I've also noticed that one who gave a poor rating for this book disparages the lack of praise for human achievement by the author. This is not the Quinn's intent. Do please refer to other authors if this is your quest. Quinn is trying to state that on the grand scale, in the big picture, humanity is not the end-all and be-all of the earth's existance. This is of course pure blasphemy, although not earth-shattering, but new to John Q Public. I would think that the genpop would feel relieved to know that they are not living the only life one can live.
With so much social unrest and turning away from traditional religion to New Age and other, unconventional philosophies, it stands to reason that our Eurasian-American culture is in fact trying to figure out "what works for them". Whether that life is discovered before, or after, a cataclysmic blow to our species is delivered by Nature, is to be seen.
If you don't want to pay full-price for the book, look around. I found my copy in a thrift store... Ask your library to order it. If Quinn's work resonates with you, by all means buy a copy for yourself, or more likely, buy a copy to loan to everyone else =)

Like the Kirkus review above, I found the ideas and plot and character to be deficient in Quinn's book. What disturbs me is the evident popularity of this dialectical and tautalogical attempt to blame overpopulation and environmental distruction upon humanitie's reliance upon "totalitarian" agriculture while praising high technology. In the book, a Catholic priest is sent on a mission to check and protect the Church from the supposed threat from a new found prophet, a so-called anti-Christ, who spouts off how we need to become hunter/gatherers again and allow nature to take it's course with the remaining billions who rely upon modern agriculture.
Strangely, and chillingly, Quinn is a fan of technology, while attacking agriculture, as if they weren't of the same root in the progressive expansion of human endeavor.
Check out his web site, it's very guru-tinged. Many techno-elitists and whooley headed environmentalists have clasped unto Quinn's ideas without considering the consequences.

The skeletal premise of this book is something that philosophers have been trying to instill in the masses for a long time, but have little success doing so: You have been told what to believe since the day you were born. Everything that you have been taught, is just that-- taught, not necessarily true.

Just like `Ishmael' I didn't always agree with the argument presented to me, however, I cannot emphasize enough how important this book, and others like it are, because they present an entirely new way of thinking. One that is less myopic and arrogant. One that could very well save our species, if not the planet. Even if you don't agree with the conclusions drawn, the premises will still change the way you see the world, and THAT is important.

However, read Ishmael first. If you don't like that book, then I doubt you will make it very far in this one.

Like the Kirkus review above, I found the ideas and plot and character to be deficient in Quinn's book. What disturbs me is the evident popularity of this dialectical and tautalogical attempt to blame overpopulation and environmental distruction upon humanitie's reliance upon "totalitarian" agriculture while praising high technology. In the book, a Catholic priest is sent on a mission to check and protect the Church from the supposed threat from a new found prophet, a so-called anti-Christ, who spouts off how we need to become hunter/gatherers again and allow nature to take it's course with the remaining billions who rely upon modern agriculture.
Strangely, and chillingly, Quinn is a fan of technology, while attacking agriculture, as if they weren't of the same root in the progressive expansion of human endeavor.
Check out his web site, it's very guru-tinged. Many techno-elitists and whooley headed environmentalists have clasped unto Quinn's ideas without considering the consequences.

Quinn put a thousand scattered pieces I had in my head and put them into one incredible horrific jigsaw puzzle. The story is ok. It's the "public teachings" that are at the core of both this story and his purpose. We can't face the truth about ourselves. We have to believe that we are God's chosen, that which is removed and above nature. We wrote the history books, the bibles, the science books, the culture of human beings. It's all slanted in our favor and honor. Of course it is. How can we speak the truth without self-destructing as individuals and a culture? Too bad we can't face our place in the universe and upon the Earth. We're not so bad. Just full of ourselves. This book will shake you to your foundation. It will leave you a bit lost and empty. But what is lost and empty can be found and filled again. Intuitively I knew the truth before I read the book. A great thank you for putting it together so profoundly and so clearly.

This book will do for philosophy and religion, my chosen fields of study, what quantum mechanics did for physics. Like many other readers, this is Quinn's best book, although to call it a novel is misleading (as Quinn himself points out in the introduction); the story is only here insofar as it helps organize Quinn's thoughts into a logical progression and allows the narrator's questions (which will often mirror the readers) to be answered in time.
This book is very thought-provoking; even if you don't agree with what is presented here, it will keep you awake more than one night, mulling over various ideas until the small hours of the morning.

I thoroughly enjoyed Ishmael and appreciate Daniel Quinn's message. I am sure that I cannot imagine the amount of mail and questions that Quinn receives and I suspect that My Ishmael and The Story of B were written to address some of those questions and perhaps the critics of Ishmael.
It is my feeling that My Ishmael was written for readers of Ishmael that lacked the imagination and ability to think for themselves, who asked about talking gorillas, or what I can do to save the world. Similarly, The Story of B was written for those that needed Ishmael to be put in a religious context. The difference for me was that in this book, the reader is the narrator, led by the hand of Quinn who takes the form of B. And I suspect that many of the questions that Father Jared Osborne asks or is asked are questions that have been asked of Quinn. Therefore the book was written as much by readers of Ishmael as by Quinn.
Another complaint is the conclusion of the novel. In the Taker culture, too many of us are much too accustomed to not having to think for ourselves, like the narrator-priest of this book. He acknowledges that he lost his faith as a subscriber to the teachings of B. However, religious belief and the teachings of Ishmael do not have to be mutually exclusive.
The Story of B is a cleverly written book with a few plot twists and does take a different (a religious) angle to Ishmael. I am sure many readers will appreciate this context, whether for their own good or simply for curiosity of how Quinn approaches it. However, I suspect that others will find this book unnecessary- readers of Ishmael who might be more comfortable with their faith or lack of it and are able to put the teachings of Ishmael into a religious context.

It simply does not get better than this: understanding what really happened before and as a consequence of the Great Forgetting. After Ishmael and The Story of B, I hope we are all teaching others about becoming Leavers and receiving laws in hope of creating a new vision and not institute dead end programs to save the world from our active destruction.

Follows "ISHMIAL" closely. Main premise of both books is developed more fully here. For the best read, you must pause where author indicates and read the "lectures" to better follow the thread. It's best read with an open and inquisitive mind set.

I think that Quinn's book is truly thought provoking, but that his solution is not feasable. It is true that we have not fully adjusted to civilization, but I think this is partly because of our innate tribalism. We have forgotten how to survive in the wilderness, but these skills are no longer needed. What we need today is to understand what works in civilization--one thing that definately does not work is one war followed by another. The question is not what we have forgotten, but what we have yet to learn. Our "fight" and "flight" response is geared for a jungle environment. Thanks to the genetic passing down of the fears of our forefathers, we have made our cities a jungle. What we suffer from is not forgetfulness but illusion. This works for our instinctive "fighters" for it puts them on a pedestal and keeps them there. The rest of us are like deer with the headlights shining in our eyes, making us immobile. Quinn's book was truly an "adventure of the mind and spirit," however, I do not advise getting our tommyhawks out of our trunks--this is not the road to enlighenment.

I read this book after stumbling across the surprisingly excellent 'The age of Aquarius' by A W Findlay and wanting to read something with similar themes. While both books have a great sense of atmosphere and place - a vaguely recognizable world, exposing flaws of modern society, displaced into a dystopia which presents a grim world where you don't know if there will be a happy ending or not...Anyway, both led me to the last page (I won't spoil it on either) pretty quickly...

Despite being an amazing story, the Story of B is not just a fictional novel. If you've read Ishmael, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It has a message, a point. In three amazing novels (Ishmael, Providence, and The Story of B), Quinn has captured the spirit of the sixties -- a spirit which desparately *wanted* to save the earth -- and has also combined it with a mission, a goal. This goal may yet save our planet

This continues where Ishmael left off in a much more exciting, direct and controversial way. It is the story of a lecturer who constructs Ishmael's work to challenge his audiences and foes. It is much more realistic than Ishmael, and, in a suspenseful novel format, a much more entertaining and challenging read. The lectures printed at the end of the book are vital for understanding our culture, population growth and the accepted wisdom of our times. Probably one of the most important books ever written.

Daniel Quinn is a true literary artist. This is a fictional novel inspired by distressing times. His exploration of how "civilization" evolved into what is today and what many people feel are global problems is genius. The novel is an eloquent articulation of serious concerns. The Story of B acknowledges these concerns and raises awareness regarding population pressures, agriculture, religous influences, etc. on the future of the earth and all of its life. Quinn's novel is fiction and the point is not to get sidetracked over whether his scienitific and historical references are 100% accurate. Quinn is not trying to bombard the reader with statistics and hard evidence, if you want that read any scientific journal. But if you want a philosophical change read The Story of B. I believe that is the point to this novel, it is to significantly change the way people think. Some of the most effective and enlightening change is made through artistic and creative endeavors.

The Story of B was as earth-shattering as Ishmael, except without the pleasantry of a gorilla teacher to make it esoteric. Basically, this is a book that takes everything about the world and turns it upside down. There is no escaping the revelation that comes with each turn of the page. At the end of the work, you will be forever changed for the better... and because of this, so will others. Without a doubt, Ishmael and the Story of B are must-reads. You have to read this book.

Daniel Quinn is a true literary artist. This is a fictional novel inspired by distressing times. His exploration of how "civilization" evolved into what is today and what many people feel are global problems is genius. The novel is an eloquent articulation of serious concerns. The Story of B acknowledges these concerns and raises awareness regarding population pressures, agriculture, religous influences, etc. on the future of the earth and all of its life. Quinn's novel is fiction and the point is not to get sidetracked over whether his scienitific and historical references are 100% accurate. Quinn is not trying to bombard the reader with statistics and hard evidence, if you want that read any scientific journal. But if you want a philosophical change read The Story of B. I believe that is the point to this novel, it is to significantly change the way people think. Some of the most effective and enlightening change is made through artistic and creative endeavors.

The Story of B was as earth-shattering as Ishmael, except without the pleasantry of a gorilla teacher to make it esoteric. Basically, this is a book that takes everything about the world and turns it upside down. There is no escaping the revelation that comes with each turn of the page. At the end of the work, you will be forever changed for the better... and because of this, so will others. Without a doubt, Ishmael and the Story of B are must-reads. You have to read this book.

Daniel Quinn, through the singularly dim priest that is the narrator of this "novel", repeatedly reminds the reader that the ideas set forth by B (the new age prophet of this story) are innovative and fresh. He protests too much. While structured as a novel, the story serves as a vehicle to put forth a "new" world view, not as a credible work of fiction. Then again, it might work better as fiction. The character B states facts that are often questionable but form the foundation of the book's philosophy. Through B, Quinn weaves together a tapestry of science, pseudo-science, and discredited ideas (particularly Malthusian concepts about agriculture and population) to form a thought-provoking, yet ultimately hollow, world view.
As a work of fiction, the book is worthless. The priest that narrates the story is so dull that Quinn has to explain why the character, supposedly an educated theologian, is so slow to understand even the basic points B makes. The plot is simply a series of events to allow Quinn to set out his world view. The book is thought provoking, but for those looking for spiritual insight, there is little to be found here.

After reading the reviews already existing - I am glad I didn't read Ishmael first. I wouldn't have wanted to be disappointed in this book. This is a great story. I emphasize story. I believe, because I want to, that this story is based on facts. The author didn't present any - but the story sounds SO REALISTIC and REASONABLE.
I know I won't be able to think as I did yesterday. I read this book in 2 days. I had a terrible time putting it down and wanted to scream any time the phone rang.
Regardless of whether this is true or tale, I believe the ideas in this book are very important for everyone to at least listen to and form their own conclusions.

I enjoyed the book tremendously, and had difficulty putting it down once I started. That said, I can't help but be a bit disappointed at the end. I kept turning pages expecting ideas worthy of blasphemy. Instead, I found fairly unthreatening ideas about man's relationship to the rest of the universe.
Of course we are no different from the other animals. Of course we are destroying the world. Of course we have to change the way we live. I guess I expected something more profound.
Still, worth reading, and even occasionally thought provoking.

this book revolutionized my thought process completely. if you read "kirkus" review, don't listen to it, becuase in the book it very clearly explains (the main character is an absolute dunce, so everything is explained over suficiently)that the anti-christ will not be at all like what we imagine the anti-christ to be (casting spells, world domination etc.), becuase if he was then people wouldn't listen to him (most people are more intelligent than religious leaders of yore who taught this anti-christ thought them to be)and he(she) wouldn't be an affective anti-christ. don't read it if you are looking for action or thick, involved plot. the book is more teachings than story, but the story is exciting too. anyway READ IT, we need to have these ideas become a pop-culture phenomenon.

If you are an individual who is concerned with the way the world is today, this is the book for you. Like Ishmael this book answers some of the most Difficult questions about why people are the way they are. It answers these hard questions in a way more truthful than do modern politicians and religious leaders.

I just finished The Story of B yesterday and will be going to buy Ishmael and My Ishmael after work today. At times Quinn can be annoying in his redundance but every word in the book leads to the last line in the book. Those last 3 words are the most prophetic, profound and inspiring words I have ever read!

So you read Ishmael and you thought it was amazing. Then you read My Ishmael and everything started to clear up a bit... you sort of began to understand what it was DQ was talking about. Then you read Beyond Civilization and you were like, "That's it...I've got all I need!" Before you start thinking you know what's going on, read The Story of B. For in this book is where it all is. It is truly the 'nail in the coffin'. I sometimes think you could do away with all the others and still get it with The Story of B. But I challenge you, the reader, to do this. Read Ishmael, read My Ishamael, read Beyond Civilization and then hammer that nail in the coffin with The Story of B.

Further elucidation of the author's ideas first presented in 'Ishmael' . Resonates even more powerfully today as the evidence supporting Quinn's thesis continues to mount. I urge everyone who has been asking themselves the all important question,"What's wrong with the way we live?", to read this book! You just might find the answer. But the solution I fear, will prove a great deal more challenging. Excellent read.

Once you read Ishmael you feel you are left without something. Something that could possibly pose as the answer to the solution to all this chaos. But Quinn leaves that answer out of Ismael. Instead, he answers it slightly in this book. (He answers it directly in Beyond Civilization) This book is connected to Ishmael, because Ishmael is mentioned in this book.
If you didnt like Ishmael, which would be absurd, because it had no plot or action to it, this book does. It is a priest going on an adventure to review a guy an decide if he is the antichrist. No more will be said in this review. BUY IT OR RENT IT!
P.S. Also, this book has speeches in it. During points in the book, it tells you to refer to the speeches in the back. I would recommend reading the speeches after you finish the book. I think it would be best if you actually think what the speech would be about. Unless your one of those people taht cant think for themselves and act brainless as the destruction of the world continues.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, of our culture (whom Quinn calls the Takers) should read this book. Not everyone will like it, some people will be offended, bored, and non-responsive to Daniel Quinn's ideas. But if you're interested in change, deep cultural change for the better, this book will knock you down, make you feel that all is lost... and then reinvest you with hope for REAL change- not just social programs that do little more than apply band-aids to society's ills, but REAL CHANGE.
I can't resist quoting Quinn's epilogue: "Vision is the river, and we who have been changed are the flood." I can't stress the potential and importance of Quinn's work enough. Please read it.

after reading ishmael by quinn, i had to read the story of b. all i'm saying is "whoa." quinn doesn't cease to revolutionize my mind with his books. this guys provides so much insite and depth in the story of b.

i am sure that most of you who have arrived at this review got here through recommendations from friends and stuff. all i'm saying is believe the hype! this is another great read. i mean, think about it, invest a few days/weeks of your time and you just might be rewarded for the rest of your life.

for real, that's the way i see it. it took my 3 months to finish this book (busy at work) and it was well worth it. it's not boring, it doesn't drag, it doesn't preach either.

it just presents you with some information and you can make your own decisions from there. better than frying your brain with MTV, mega blockbuster movies, or mindless video games right? check it out, it's worth the investment.

and by the way, read the lectures in the back of the book as you go along, don't wait till the actual end of the book. good luck. email me at: [email protected] and let me know what you guys think!

I actually enjoyed this novel more than Quinn's more celebrated Ishmael. But whatever gloves he had on in writing Ishmael, Quinn takes them off in this book. Powerful and profound critique of civilization's presumptions about, well, Everything. And it is a moving and engaging story as well.