欧宝娱乐

The reason I like Quinn鈥檚 style in 鈥淚shmael鈥� is that he doesn鈥檛 assume a pedantic perch atop humanity and force-feed a philosophically-driven, A-Z laundry list of 鈥渉ow to make yourself a better human being鈥� and 鈥渟ave the world one person at a time鈥� mantra down the reader鈥檚 throat. His style of writing is intimate. Reading 鈥淚shmael鈥� kind of reminds you of sitting in lecture with that one professor in college whose class you earnestly enjoyed and looked forward to attending each week - those lectures where you felt as if taking notes was more of an inconvenient distraction than simply opening your ears and listening for 60 minutes. You got more out of it by just sitting there like a blob taking it all in as opposed to fretting over particulars. You can tell Quinn is (or was) a good teacher. A good teacher defined as one who guides his/her students to the answers to their questions; not one who regurgitates, spoon-feeds or paraphrases concepts, principles and opinions down your throat systematically. Like Ishmael's narrator, I too found myself excited to come back each day (via turning the next page) to learn another part of the 鈥渟tory.鈥�

What I find fascinating about this book is the power of its seemingly simplistic message: 鈥淢an unto himself is temporal phenomenon.鈥� Quinn doesn鈥檛 waste his time extrapolating the myriad of problems that affect our world to make his point. He doesn鈥檛 bother to persuade or guilt the reader into action with 鈥渄oomsday鈥� scenarios, statistics, outcomes or make sententious arguments to bolster his credibility as a 鈥渢hinker.鈥� Instead, he plainly examines the most basic function of the human species and how the organization of its functionality became 鈥� well, dysfunctional. Regardless of whether you factor God, evolution or 鈥渓ittle green men鈥� into your respective paradigm to help you make sense of humanity, its purpose and ultimate destiny - refuting the message in this book is unreasonable. Human beings are the most evolved, intelligent and capable species on the planet. As such, we find ourselves amidst a paradox. We are progenitor to the earth as well as the root source of its impending (or at least eventual) devastation.

Ishmael is not a book whose scope is easily confined to the adverse effects of humanity on the environment or excess population or invasion of one civilization by another throughout history or how we鈥檙e killing the polar bear into extinction, etc. Its message is simply that man has forgotten his place in the order of nature (in a very large context) and that happened the moment man was cognizant of his innate ability to differentiate good vs. evil as a species. As a result, man began to use that acumen as an instinctual instrument to serve as justification for what 鈥渓ives鈥� and what 鈥渄ies鈥� pursuant to ensuring his unlimited growth 鈥� at any expense. - KL