Malthus argued that the world’s population grows geometrically-in other words, it grows by a set factor in a given amount of time (for example, it doubles every ten years). Many of their arguments-arguments that show up in Ishmael-originated with the 19th century English thinker Thomas Malthus. Ishmael can also be situated in the “Malthusian renaissance” of the 1970s-a time when many of the world’s prominent economists and statisticians began to argue, with renewed conviction, that the world faced an inevitable hunger crisis.

To Quinn, the radicalism of this era was highly admirable, but it didn’t go far enough in attacking the root cause of injustice in the world: the myths of “Taker” culture. In many ways, Ishmael is a reaction to (and a critique of) the 1960s. the Civil Rights Act, which protected and reinforced the rights of African-Americans to vote under fair circumstances protests against the Vietnam War and the feminist movement, which fought for equality for women in business, politics, and the public sphere. Notable achievements of the 1960s include the Civil Rights Movement, led by figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. These movements were especially common in the United States, in part because, following World War II, the country had a large, well-educated middle class that cared deeply about social and political issues. During this decade, millions of people throughout the world used their education and the free press to organize populist movements that fought for human rights. The most important historical era to which Ishmael reacts is the radical movement of the 1960s. Since 2000, he’s been involved in a great number of rallies, conferences, and forums regarding issues of anarchism, environmentalism, and pacifism. Following the success of Ishmael, Quinn wrote two other philosophical novels about anthropology and the environment: The Story of B (1996), and My Ishmael (1997). Ishmael won Quinn the prestigious Turner Award, organized by the media billionaire Ted Turner.

Quinn’s breakthrough came in 1991, when he wrote his best-known novel, the philosophical dialogue Ishmael. He didn’t write a novel of his own until 1988-this novel, Dreamer, was a work of science fiction, and while it earned fairly positive reviews, it didn’t sell well. Following his departure from Kentucky, Quinn moved to New York and worked in publishing for many years. Quinn fell out with his mentors at the abbey-a falling out that contributed to his abandonment of Catholicism altogether in the mid-1960s. Afterwards, he studied at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, in the hopes of becoming a monk. He later studied at a variety of universities, including Saint Louis University, where he earned a B.A. Daniel Quinn was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and was raised Catholic.

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