“Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow”– a primer for success

Hightower, Jim with Susan DeMarco. “Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow”, John Wiley and Sons, 2007.

A Primer for Success

Amos Lassen

Not everyone has to go with “the flow”, follow the status quo, or do what is expected of them in order tohave and enjoy a successful life. Jim Hightower and Susan DeMarco give us useful information on not only how to treat employees fairly, provide a good product, aid ecology and run a business. We learn how to standup and do what we really believe instead of allowing ourselves to be pushed around by other people.

Jim Hightower has mastery for teaching with humor and empowering the individual at the same time. He teaches us how to be ourselves and he does so with humor all the while providing a moral to every story he tells. Along with the stories he tells he gives source material and lists of organizations mentioned in the book with ways to contact them and an additional reading list.

What makes this book different from “How To” books for achieving success is Hightower’s approach on how to avoid the corporate lists of “do’s” and “don’ts”. He uses numerable examples of large corporate entities and shows how they, by banding together with smaller companies have been able to truly succeed. He shows by merging, a single product can save a small company from death and he shows how to bring about there mergers.

The method is humorous and thoughtful and by showing that complaining does no one any good, he gives a new perspective. In the way he challenges us to stand up and take action against big business, he teaches a valuable lesson. The fact that America has become dependent upon corrupt business ventures even though we know that it is happening. It is a breath of relief to tread this book in light of what is happening to America today. Hightower breaks corporate America down and tells that it only has the goal of getting the last penny out of the consumer. They do not look at the consequences of what they do which includes ruining both lives and ecological systems and do not really care about the rights of workers or the communities where the businesses are located.

Politically we learn that each and every one of us should be involved on the grassroots level of politics. Instead of waiting for change to come about, we must make that change happen. This will eliminate the perks paid by business to Congress at our own expense. Our most vital product, the food chain, is under corporation control and those that grow the products that we eat have lost all control.

Our eyes are opened by this book and Hightower holds nothing back.