I just finished Walter Laqueur's "The Last Days of Europe", which is an interestingly pessimistic book. He's not talking about collapse, or some near term change into "Eurabia" (you can google for that phrase; it's something a lot of alarmists are writing about).

What Laqueur is mostly worried about is the way immigration in Europe has not led to the same "melting pot" thing you see in the US, Canada, and Australia, and the impact that will have on society when you combine it with the demographic changes (the very low birthrates). He points out that the birthrates in Europe have been dropping for 150 years, something I really had not known.

It's a fairly matter of fact book, less about solutions than laying out the facts as Laqueur sees them. He doesn't so much see catastrophe coming as irrevocable change from what Europe has been into something different - and based on demographics, less influential than some people expect. It's an interesting read, but certainly not an "up" book.

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