While this book draws on a lot of personal research, it should be approached as an act of memoir. The book is at its best when the author is discussing what is within her personal realm of experience. This includes: her personal experiences of illness and responses from her care practitioners, discussions of illness as metaphor and how that affects approaches to care, her specific experiences as an upper-middle-class white woman, and her explorations of alternative treatments and their appeal to those suffering from illnesses that cannot be easily understood. I found these parts validating. I, too, am an upper-middle-class white woman suffering from multiple intersecting autoimmune conditions and found this part relatable. In particular, I appreciated the discussion of autoimmunity in the context of self vs non-self and the way that framing autoimmunity in this way can place responsibility on individuals for their disease. This was a real perspective shift that I will take forward with me. I do find it concerning when books like this, which will often be sought out by ill people looking for answers, discuss alternative and “controversial” treatment practices without actually digging into the controversy around those treatments. The line between memoir and treatment recommendation can become quite blurry. Where does the author’s discussion of her own experiences end, and the platforming and advertisement of treatments that may not have medical value begin? However, it’s when the author tries to step beyond her personal experiences that the book begins to really struggle. There is no discussion of disability in this book, which limits the author's ability to truly dig into the structural and cultural impacts of illness and disease. In the same way that the author discusses the distance the well can feel with those experiencing illness, her wealth and privilege allow her to distance herself from identifying with disability. Moreover, while the author occasionally discusses racial and class inequities that can contribute to illness, these discussions feel surface-level, because the author has no personal experience with this. While she mentions putting expensive specialists, alternative medical treatments and supplements on her credit cards, she appears to have a robust support system that allows her to do so, and her interaction with the medical system is coloured by this.

 The book also struggles when it tries to apply the author’s narrow view of illness to “solutions”. This is when the neoliberal perspective of this book becomes most clear. The challenges of coordinating complex care across a fragmented and financially driven healthcare system are attributed to doctors’ failure to “understand marketing, economics, and sales tactics,” not the financial constraints placed on care. The harrowing effects of widespread long-term chronic illness, represented by Long-Covid are explored merely through the economic perspective of lost productivity, ill workers and the financial strain on the healthcare system. The more direct solutions offered, like coordinated Autoimmune centres that mirror existing Cancer care centres, are promising, but discussed without any reflection on which types of people can access the expensive, specialized care these facilities offer under a for-profit healthcare system. If you are struggling with a poorly understood illness, you might find some value in this book, but for me it fell far short of what a real discussion of autoimmunity, disability and care should be.

On Tyranny is heavily neoliberal, relying on fearmongering and flattening of complex political theory. Snyder leans hard on horseshoe theory, equating communism with Nazism repeatedly. Snyder is a Holocaust historian, but he doesn't mention that communists were some of the first people targeted by the Nazis, because he wants to paint the USSR as the ultimate threat and warn Americans against becoming it. It’s all well and good to critique Nazis, Trump, and the USSR but kind of disingenuous to flatten them all into the same “totalitarian” umbrella. It’s giving red scare propaganda. He has some interesting points to make but his most useful information has been approached with more nuance and systemic analysis by scholars like Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Paulo Freire, Frantz Fanon, etc. The book’s heavy focus on individualism over collective organizing and systemic critique paints readers as vigilante superheroes destined to single-handedly save America from fascism by... *checks notes* voting, reading Harry Potter, and avoiding social media? In the same individualistic vein, he positions Hitler and Trump as uniquely evil anomalies and not direct results of systems that are often bolstered by capitalism and imperialism. This is pretty common in liberal poli-sci books that refuse to actually critique the systems they exist in. These two issues working in tandem translate into Snyder simultaneously flattening communism into the Soviet model and subtly implying that America has at any point in time been a democracy and not an imperialist empire built off of genocide and slavery. There’s also a certain irony to his advice revolving around fighting for free speech, standing up for your beliefs, and refusing to comply preemptively, but he can’t even call Trump by name. I understand wanting a primer, something accessible for people to pick up and become politically engaged but I wouldn’t suggest this one. It helps alleviate the feelings of hopelessness that come from our current times by giving people things to reflect on, but it's only a short term relief. He doesn’t go far enough in addressing real systemic change, and doesn't give many tangible examples on what organizing against fascism actually looks like.