The End of Europe - James Kirchick

Subtitiled "Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age"  Published in 2017

Kirchick looks at a number of European issues through the lens of specific countries and their problems.  Some of the problems he discusses include neutrality as a stance and how it encourages Russian aggression and meddling, the rise of antisemitism and the failure to integrate Muslim immigrants into the European system of values (also seen as a failure to manage immigration as an issue in general), the desire for European wealth without European values and fiscal discipline, the failure to stand firm on state borders and state protection (again in the face of Russian aggression), the pursuit of self-interested economic gains at the expense of other EU states.  Basically the failure to act as a mutually supportive group, and to blame others for the problems of one's own political culture and economy.
For me, the most troubling tendency is the rise of apologists for Russian aggression and interference.  This shows a singular stupidity in relation to even recent history, especially when you see such tendencies in former East Bloc countries.  True, the US has looked after its interests in helping develop the European project, but the net effect has been mutual benefit (unlike some other places where the US has been active...).  People have also forgotten that Europeans have twice in the past century called on the US to help them clean up a mess of their own making, at the price of many American lives.  This gives them the right to participation.  The Russia project, on the other hand, has never been about mutual benefit for the larger population of other countries, something the corrupt elites in many European countries seem to have grasped.  Their Russian apologist stance is based on narrow self-interest or crony interest.   The Russian project has no ideological cover now - oligarchy, corruption, power.
Also the ability to suppress core social values when face with cultural relativism.

Two things that bothered me at first are the usual problems with many US political thinkers.  First, they are blind to the US' use of many practices that they criticize in relation to Russia.  Second, they are blindly pro-Israel and pro-Zionist, and are blind to the many machinations that Israel and Zionist groups in other countries use to stifle criticism and discussion.

While these issues are technically outside the focus of this book, they need to be acknowledged to give the criticisms levies some legitimacy.  Especially true considering the current (as of publication) US president embodies many of the same issues and uses many of the same disinformation techniques discussed in the book.

Worth reading, especially alongside the recently read discussion of major US failings,  Time to Start Thinking, by Edward Luce.

Andrew Wyeth In Retrospect - P. Junker, A. Lewis

An interesting collection of essays about Wyeth's work and ways in which it ties into his life.  Through this you get a sense of some of the themes or concerns that lie behind his paintings.  The book also has a fabulous set of reproductions of some of his work that you don't see as often.

Wenjack - Joseph Boyden

A small short story fictionalizing the death of a real boy who ran away from a residential school and died alone at the side of a railway through the north woods on his way home.  The boy was nine years old.
I like how Boyden weaves in native culture and views of the realtionship between humans and other living beings.  Animal spirits are there with him and we hear bits of the story from their points of view.  This relationship is actually the centre of the story itself.
A short afterword discusses the actual case of Charlie Wenjack, the boy in the story.

Corvus - Harold Johnson

Johnson is a Cree living in northern Saskatchewan.  This book takes place in the future when global warming has pushed most people out of southern latitudes, and when agricultural systems are collapsing due to genetic modification and pesticide use.
It is a bit of a preachy book, a book of ideas more than of characters, but Johnson explores and contrasts different world views in an effective way.  The main groups/views within the book are:  corporate consumer culture; an isolated native band living a traditional way of life; a self-contained community outside the main town living communally.  Issues discussed include wealth disparity, climate disaster, justice system, sustainable agriculture, native spirituality and culture, consumerism as madness.
A very interesting section at the end has a former radical protestor discussing the uselessness of protest.  Some good quotes:
"Protesting against war is like standing in front of a mental hospital with a sign that says, "Stop being insane" p. 273
"What about the environment?  Don't you think that is something worth protesting for?
..."If we cannot raise our level of sanity to the point that we care about other humans, about our own species, we will never learn to care about all the other species we share the planet with." p. 274

An author with some provocative ideas.

The Walnut Manison - Miljenko Jergovic

A sprawling story centred loosely around the life of an old woman who has gone crazy.  Starts at the end point, and then moves backwards in time through her life.  The implication seems to be that she went crazy because of the disordered nature of all the lives that intersect hers.  I finished it, but it wasn't exactly a gripping read.  I found his other book a better read.

Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours) Harold R. Johnson

A tough book.  Johnson pulls no punches.  He looks clearly at the problem of alcohol and its consequences in native communities in Canada.  Some of his ideas and points can spin off into Canadian society in general.  He shows a good understanding of the subtleties of this issue, and the many hot buttons that surround it, which make it so hard to discuss and explore solutions.  He collects interesting, sometimes surprising, statistics on the role of alcohol in a variety of crimes and injuries, where you see alcohol behind so much of the accidental deaths and legal charges in society - even though this is never discussed openly as a problem.  He explores the difference between addiction and alcohol abuse.  He looks at the economic effects of alcohol abuse in the North - they are not all negative.  So many justice system, health system and social work jobs depend on the continued abuse of alcohol and all the problems it creates.

His most interesting idea is that everything is stories.  The story you tell yourself about alcohol, the image you create of it, the role you assign it in your life, is at the root of the problem.  To change the situation, you, your community, your society, need a different story.  This, of course, can be applied to many other aspects of your life.

He also looks at what he refers to as the victim story, which justifies or explains so many of the issues native communities face.  He points out how the victim story leaves you powerless to effect a change to your own situation, as the victim story is one of powerlessness and submission.

Underneath it all, his main stress is personal responsibility and choice.

Insightful analysis of a difficult situation.  Some hard ideas and thoughts.  Personal and from the inside.

There are implications in this book RE the nanny state issue.  Native people in Canada have been living in a nanny state for far longer than the rest of us because of the Indian Act.  Many issues that are beginning to be discussed around guaranteed income and giving people "in need" personal choice and control in redirecting their lives.

We Will Not Be Silenced - Robinson & Griffin

Subtitled:  The Academic Repression of Israel's Critics

While I did not read this whole book, I took in parts of it.  It examines the stories of academics who have been blacklisted or had problems because of their academic work which was critical of Israel.  Each victim has submitted an essay on their experience, which can be interesting reading.  What I found more interesting though, were the brief accounts at the beginning of each case, that gives the basic outline of the offending work, and the methods of repression and exclusion used by the concerned organizations and institutions.
Interestingly, most, if not all, of the cases take place in the U.S.

Paris Vagabond - Jean-Paul Clébert

Another book similar to "The Other Paris"  but told from the point of view of someone who lived deliberately as a clochard for a couple of years in Paris.  It gives an intimate picture of the life, but it is definitely not a romantic picture.  I am still left wondering how people choose this life (some do, though many don't; they just end up there) as it is a very hard life.  Yes, you have a certain freedom, but on the other hand you are under the full weight of demands for minimal survival, which rear up again and again on a daily basis.  It turns such everyday needs as eating, sleeping and cleaning into demanding problems.
This book was written post-war, and you can already sense the author's awareness of living in a disappearing world.  Both this and the other book are so reminiscent of Henry Miller's books on his life in Paris - already by the 40s, this life had become a stereotype of itself, and image to be aspired after.
Most of the people in this life are troubled souls - the artists that emerged out of this milieu were lucky in that they were very good at something, which in the end allows them to escape the poverty and grind.