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  • The Story of B

  • Ishmael Series, Book 2
  • By: Daniel Quinn
  • Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
  • Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (7 ratings)

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The Story of B

By: Daniel Quinn
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
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Publisher's Summary

From the author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning best seller Ishmael and its sequel, My Ishmael, comes a powerful novel with one of the most profound spiritual testaments of our time.

“A compelling ‘humantale’ that will unglue, stun, shock, and rearrange everything you’ve learned and assume about Western civilization and our future.” (Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce)

Father Jared Osborne has received an extraordinary assignment from his superiors: Investigate an itinerant preacher stirring up deep trouble in Central Europe. His followers call him B, but his enemies say he’s something else: the Antichrist. However, the man Osborne tracks across a landscape of bars, cabarets, and seedy meeting halls is no blasphemous monster - though an earlier era would undoubtedly have rushed him to the burning stake. For B claims to be enunciating a gospel written not on any stone or parchment but in our very genes, opening up a spiritual direction for humanity that would have been unimaginable to any of the prophets or saviors of traditional religion. Pressed by his superiors for a judgement, Osborne is driven to penetrate B’s inner circle, where he soon finds himself an anguished collaborator in the dismantling of his own religious foundations. 

More than a masterful novel of adventure and suspense, The Story of B is a rich source of compelling ideas from an author who challenges us to rethink our most cherished beliefs. 

Explore Daniel Quinn’s spiritual Ishmael trilogy: 

  • Ishmael
  • My Ishmael
  • The Story of B
©1996 Daniel Quinn (P)2021 Random House Audio

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  • Kim
  • 12-11-2023

Brilliant

Quinn takes his ideas to a deeper understanding in the hearts and minds of his readers. I look forward to reading the third book of this series.

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Disappointing sequel

I really enjoyed Ishmael so decided to listen to the sequel. I was hoping for the author to elaborate on his points in Ishmael. Whilst some of his ideas are interesting, for me they fall flat because he doesn’t follow through with them to their conclusions. He posits these ideas as totally groundbreaking, which I found a bit embarrassing because they’re not.
eg. he talks a lot about lowering population but doesn’t follow up with ideas of how to actually achieve that effectively and ethically

The ideas in The Story of B seemed like all the ones which were too weak and half baked to include in Ishmael.
The format of the book doesn’t work well to communicate the authors ideas. It’s written as a fiction novel so there’s no sources or proof for what he’s talking about. This makes his ideas much less credible.
I found the story itself boring and the plot absurd (not in a good way). *spoilers* he reckons his ideas are so groundbreaking they have the potential to shake society to its foundations and inspire assassination plots to silence its proponents.

I also found the communication style of his ideas tiresome. He uses the Socratic dialogue method to teach the main character and thus the audience his supposedly mind blowing ideas. It gets really repetitive and comes across as a little condescending.

He spends a lot of time hyping up his ideas but the actual delivery and the ideas themselves fall flat.

I regretted listening to this one because it made me like Ishmael a lot less.

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