IN THE MAIL: Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse: A Novel of the Turbulent Near Future. Here’s hoping that the near future won’t be quite as “turbulent” as this suggests. On the other hand, the very high Amazon ranking (#985) for a self-published book with no big mainstream attention bespeaks either a great viral marketing effort (I got this via a reader) or a lot of concern that’s not getting mainstream attention either. Er, or both, I guess.