Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit is a philosophical novel about environmentalism and the ethics of sustainability. The book is formatted like a Socratic dialogue between Ishmael, a gorilla, and the narrator. Ishmael tells of two groups: the takers, who claim superiority over all other forms of life, attempting to perfect and take from the earth all they can, and the leavers, those who live in harmony with the earth and accept their non-dominance over other species. The takers, Ishmael demonstrates, have nearly destroyed the planet earth.