What book change your life?

[Anung Un Rama]

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Can you expand on this. I’ve read it, as well as the sequel (the story of B) and, while I liked it, I didn’t get anything profound from it.

 

[squeakymcgill]

Can you expand on this. I’ve read it, as well as the sequel (the story of B) and, while I liked it, I didn’t get anything profound from it.

It seems like most people, in most cultures, have the sense that humanity has taken a wrong turn somewhere. Each culture kind of fills in the blank...corporatism is one of our modern answers, while sin/defying the will of the gods has been a long running theme among other cultures. Ishmael's answer takes it back to the neolithic revolution ("totalitarian agriculture") which is a lot deeper than I'd ever thought to consider. He lays out a pretty convincing argument in terms of biology and anthropology that really appealed to my college-aged self and for a long time it served as a framework for my still-forming worldview.

Ishmael's argument still holds water IMO but more recent work like Charles Mann's 1491 shows that humans were dominating nature even without totalitarian agriculture. And Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens goes back even farther than Ishmael, arguing a cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago is what allowed humans to effectively exist outside of ecological checks and balances.

I think it's absolutely worth reading at any age but like other books in this thread - Catcher in the Rye comes to mind in particular - it's especially powerful if you read it at the right age. I was an idealistic youth growing up in Seattle, feeling alienated, looking for answers, finding my peace in weeks-long solo trips in the mountains, and I think Ishmael was just exactly the book I needed to read at that point in life.

 

[CI]

Outliers-malcolm gladwell.

 

[Bangkok ready d1]

Books are gay

 

[BornOnMonday]

Once in a lifetime book

 

[Lubaolong]

Came out in early 2008? But I remember some first chapters were published online maybe as early as late 2006? First time that I had really even thought much about the topic.