The book john was reading
The Patriotism by Mikhail Bakunin
I haven't been able to find any references to it
done the google thing and come up empty
You don't have to stand tall, but you do have to stand up!
I have just 'been around' Bakunin's writings on several sites. And B. seems not to have written anything on patriotism.
So I think this (phoney) book is just to illustrate that John/Sean is an intellectual - one of those 'who read the books --- and eat and eat and talk and talk'.
All in contrast to the peasant Juan.
He is probably also a picture of the European Left in the late sixties/early seventies who studied Marx, Engels, Lenin, Proudhon, Bakunin, you name them, all to find out how to change the unjust and unfair society around them