| Swim against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 81 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1025743
Category: Book
Authors: Jim Hightower, Susan Demarco
Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD
Studio: Brilliance Audio on CD
Manufacturer: Brilliance Audio on CD
Label: Brilliance Audio on CD
Format: Abridged, Audiobook, Cd
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 5
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7 x 5.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 1423363582
Dewey Decimal Number: 322.30973
EAN: 9781423363583
ASIN: 1423363582
Publication Date: March 7, 2008
Release Date: March 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Don?t look around, but the corporate and political powers that be want you to put this book down, right now. It definitely is NOT on their approved list.
Swim against the Current is one of those books that the power elites don?t like seeing in stores, much less in your hands - not merely because it challenges their established order, but especially because our book reveals paths that folks like you can use to escape their rigid, hierarchical structures and discover a bit more satisfaction in life.
They prefer that you pick up one of those escapist novels over there across the store, rather than finding out that the greatest escape of all can be from stultifying conventional wisdom. We Americans are constantly harassed into thinking that we can?t break the mold that those in charge have made for us. But as a friend of ours puts it: ?Those who say it can?t be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.?
It?s the uplifting stories of mavericks that we tell here. They?ve broken free of the corporate tentacles, free of business-as-usual politics, free of top-down elites. They?re figuring out new ways to do commerce, ways to create political channels that empower grassroots Americans, and ways to live their lives.
As these folks show, resistance is not futile . . it?s fertile. Join the fun! Happy listening!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 76 more reviews...
Who Gave Hightower the Rose-Colored Glasses? December 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
SWIM AGAINST THE CURRENT is the most positive, uplifting, optimistic book that I've encountered lately. Hightower and DeMarco present the reader with numerous real-world examples of grass-roots success in combating both big business and big politics in quite a few different arenas. The concerns in this book range from finding organically-grown food that has not been weakened or tainted by the agri-business industry to taking action against the polluters and environmental destroyers of the American coal industry. Best of all, in addition to describing the success of grass-root movements that have taken on industrial giants, the book gives us points of contact, addresses, and Web sites for those movements. Much more than just a well-deserved rant against inequities, environmental destruction, overpriced drugs, and tainted foods, this becomes a reference book that enables the reader to initiate or extend his or her own actions against industrialized societal miscreants.
The text, as one might expect, is couched in Hightower's (or is it DeMarco's?) inimitable writing style that makes his newspaper column so marvelously readable. Hightower has no reservations in "telling it like it is," and he pulls no punches when skewering the titans of industry to whom obscene profits are always of greater importance than is the good of humankind (and its fellow species upon planet Earth).
Having described what I feel are the book's strong points, I must now also address what I feel to be its two weaknesses, one major and the other much less so. To me, the book is almost too optimistic, too positive, as though it were celebrating prematurely the victory of grassroots common sense over capitalistic profiteering. Not to diminish the successes recounted in this book, but I also happen to live by a town which recently abolished its entire recycling program because it wasn't economically profitable for the city coffers. I cannot help thinking that, for each victory that made it into the book, there is a defeat somewhere that did not. The book seems to radiate an almost Pollyanna-ish atmosphere, an unrealistically optimistic assessment of the state of things. Oh, I realize that the entire purpose of SWIM AGAINST THE CURRENT is to show what can be accomplished by common folk with sufficient determination. Still, the resultant picture seems a bit too much on the rosy side.
The lesser weakness is that, as well-written as this is, it is not a timeless book that our great-grandchildren will hasten to pick up. It is a book for today and is designed to inspire the reader to action now. The examples and organizations appearing in it may not speak to a reader fifty years, much less a century or so, from now. Again, I confess that what I see as a small weakness falls well outside the purview of the writers, for their concern is indeed with the here and now, with goading all of us into action while there is still time to halt global warming and the emasculation of our food and the removal of the mountains that inspire us spiritually. Still, considered as literature, the impact of the book is of somewhat limited duration.
All in all, this is a better-than-decent book on social activism and one that contains specific contacts helpful for one to become engaged in the struggle. It deserves a good reading, but do so some time this decade, at least.
 Cheerleading the do-gooders September 19, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have no doubt of Jim Hightower's sincerity and enthusiasm for his many causes, but this loose-jointed, rambling book is neither very well-organized nor deeply insightful. It is little more than a random collection of anecdotal material (much of it hackneyed -- e.g. the miracle of micro-lending; evangelicals who take a stand against global warming) about people who break out of the corporate, capitalist mode to do good for humanity. The tone is almost frantic, the pace a gallop, and the conclusions drawn from the examples ill-defined or non-existent. The prose is peppered with homespun cliches ("salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner" and "congress's kow-towing to corporate interests" appear in the same sentence) and when I put it down I felt like I had just endured a three-hour harangue from a street preacher.
Sorry, this fish don't swim.
 Brings Hope Into Focus September 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of the best books I've read in a long, long time. It makes hope for the future of our country real, and is a most valuable guide to actual, tangible ways to get involved with making this a better country, and have fun while you're at it. I would encourage anybody who would like to see less corporate involvement and more "people power" involvement with our food, energy sources, political system, etc., to read this book and get inspired to action! Includes actual contact information about the wonderful organizations he talks about. A goldmine of information. Hightower has hit it out of the park again!
Jim "Whole Hog" Hightower August 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I worked in the Texas Legislature many, many moons ago when Jim Hightower served as the Commissioner of Agriculture for the state of Texas. The guy had this novel idea that he was supposed to represent family farmers, not corporate agri-business interests. He was also of this bizarre notion that the producers of what we eat and what we wear were in a symbiotic relationship with those who ate and those who wore clothes. What a guy! He understood that one must break a few eggs to make an omelet. And he personified the old-fashioned idea that it was time for farmers to 'raise less corn and raise more hell.'
Hightower and his compadre, Susan DeMarco, have written another excellent piece of work on how average folks can take control of their economic and political destiny. A message that seems to have been lost on many within the Democratic Party.
What an approriately named book. Keep after 'em Hightower!
You don't have to be a jerk to be successful July 17, 2008
Nor do you have to be a loser to be socially responsible. Jim Hightower, irreverent NPR commentator and activist Susan de Marco show ample proof in "Swim Against the Current." They profile the sort of folks who use honesty and ingenuity to bypass the corporate catch trap. It's a can-do sort of book that will make you believe that America can still be a place where anyone can succeed without stomping all over one another, and, yeah, all over the Constitution.
In this day and age it's not only radical to think that way, but it's downright subversive! But if you have even an ounce of populist feeling in you, it'll make you cheer to read these stories. Ethical values and social responsibility aren't antithetical to success; who knew?
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