Daniel Quinn Books In Order

Ishmael

Teacher Seeks Pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person. It was just a three line ad in the personals section, but it launched the adventure of a lifetime. IshmaelSo begins Ishmael, an utterly unique and captivating spiritual adventure, which redefines what it is to be human. And thus, we are introduced to Ishmael, a creature of immense wisdom. He has a story to tell, one that no human being has ever heard before. It is the story of man’s place in the grand scheme, and it begins at the birth of time. This history of the world has never appeared in any schoolbook. ‘Does the earth belong to man?’ Ishmael asks. ‘Or does man belong to the earth?’Author Daniel Quinn is the first winner of the prestigious Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, awarded for fiction providing creative and positive solutions to global problems. Sly, witty, and profound, Ishmael is a tour de force of the mind and spirit an extraordinary intellectual adventure that listeners will never forget.

The Story of B

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’s Ishmael was the winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, a prize honoring fiction that offers creative and positive solutions to global problems. This extraordinary novel has become an underground bestseller and a testament for a burgeoning spiritual movement. Mr. Quinn’s new novel is a companion piece not a story that follows the first but rather a story contemporaneous with the first. In it, the Ishmael saga takes a startling direction that is in no way prefigured in the original.

The gorilla licked his lips nervously, it seemed to me. ‘I think we can safely say that I’m not prepared to deal with the needs of a person your age. I think that can be safely said. Yes.’

‘You mean you give up. Is that what you’re telling me? You want me to go away because you give up. Don’t you think a twelve year old girl can have an earnest desire to save the world?’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said, though the words sounded like they were pretty hard to get out.

‘Then why won’t you talk to me? Your ad in the paper said you need a pupil. Isn’t that what it said?’

‘That’s what it said.’

‘Well, you’ve got one. Here I am.’

With these words we meet Julie Gerchak, one of the most engaging young heroes since Huckleberry Finn and one of Ishmael’s most challenging and rewarding disciples. Unable to justify turning her away, Ishmael accepts the daunting task of juggling two pupils of widely differing characters one of whom Julie insists on remaining unknown to the other Alan Lomax, known to the readers of Ishmael as the narrator of that book. Julie is unquestionably bright quite possibly brighter than Alan, but she’s also shy of his educational background by ten years! This means Ishmael can by no means follow the same strategy with each or expect the same outcome from each. Alan and Julie don’t just take different routes with their simian mentor, they end up in very different places.

But something else distinguishes Ishmael’s relationship with Julie. When the infrastructure of his life begins to crumble, Ishmael must choose one of his students to entrust with a great secret and a great mission. And, surprisingly, his choice falls not on the older, more experienced student but on the younger one. In revealing the mission and the secret entrusted to her, Julie pens a conclusion to the Ishmael saga that will raise cheers from his fans all around the world.

After Dachau

Daniel Quinn, well known for Ishmael a life changing book for readers the world over once again turns the tables and creates an otherworld that is very like our own, yet fascinating beyond words. Imagine that Na*zi Germany was the first to develop an atomic bomb and the Allies surrendered. America was never bombed, occupied, or even invaded, but was nonetheless forced to recognize Na*zi world dominance. The Na*zis continued to press their campaign to rid the planet of mongrel races until eventually the world from Capetown to Tokyo was populated by only white faces. Two thousand years in the future people don t remember, or much care, about this distant past. The reality is that to be human is to be Caucasian, and what came before was literally ancient history having nothing to do with those then living. Now imagine that reincarnation is real, that souls migrate over time from one living creature to another, and that a soul that once animated an American black woman living at the time of World War II now animates an Aryan in Quinn’s new world, and that due to a traumatic accident memories of this earlier incarnation assert themselves. Compared by readers and critics alike to 1984 and Brave New World, After Dachau is a new dystopian classic with much to say about our own time, and the dynamics of human history.

The Holy

They knew us before we began to walk upright. Shamans called them guardians, mythmakers called them tricksters, pagans called them gods, churchmen called them demons, folklorists called them shape shifters. They ve obligingly taken any role we ve assigned them, and, while needing nothing from us, have accepted whatever we thought was their due love, hate, fear, worship, condemnation, neglect, oblivion.
Even in modern times, when their existence is doubted or denied, they continue to extend invitations to those who would travel a different road, a road not found on any of our cultural maps. But now, perceiving us as a threat to life itself, they issue their invitations with a dark purpose of their own. In this dazzling metaphysical thriller, four who put themselves in the hands of these all but forgotten Others venture across a sinister American landscape hidden from normal view, finding their way to interlocking destinies of death, terror, transcendental rapture, and shattering enlightenment.

Tales of Adam

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

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.

A Newcomer’s Guide to the Afterlife

The guide of choice for anyone who plans to die someday are YOU ready for the AFTERLIFE?To find out, take this simple quiz:1. Like Earth, the Afterlife has celebrities, outcasts, deadheads, losers, and busybodies. TrueFalse2. Is there an Afterlife after the Afterlife? Yes No3. When you first arrive on ‘the Other Side,’ you will be given: a a set of wings b a toaster c a copy of A Newcomer’s Guide to the AfterlifeDon’t worry if you’re not sure how to respond. A Newcomer’s Guide to the Afterlife has answers to these questions and more and if you’re lucky, some of them may turn out to be right!An irreverent, one of a kind compendium from the award winning author of Ishmael, A Newcomer’s Guide to the Afterlife can be read as a parable, an allegory, a work of fiction or exactly what it claims to be: a helpful handbook for the recently deceased. It is filled with uncommon wisdom, bizarre imaginings, uncanny perceptions, and unexpected humor. Is it fantastic escapism or a seminal event in human history? Read it and find out…
. Face it. The Afterlife is the ultimate test. You might as well study.

If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways

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.

Providence

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.