Daniel Quinn (1935–2018)

Overall a solid book, and a worthy follow up to Ishmael. The story occasionally felt awkward, and the book was a bit too preachy (as expected), but it was still wonderfully written at times (see below). My biggest issue with it was that I disagreed somewhat with the underlying assumptions of the arguments made (totalitarian agriculture is the hardest way to live?!), which made it hard to be blown away. Recommended to those who like Ishmael.

"Remember that your tracks are one strand of the web woven endlessly in the hand of god. They're tied to those of the mouse in the field, the eagle on the mountain, the crab in its hold, the lizard beneath its rock. The leaf that falls to the ground a thousand miles away touches your life. The impress of your food in the soil is felt through a thousand generations." - 186-187… (meer)

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?… (meer)