Kergulen Island - maybe people actually live there full-time in the ATL, since it's one of the safest areas under French rule! It's the sort of TL where homesteading seems attractive because people have been so terrible to each other for the last century or so.
Dunno about the last chapters!
Lithuania: Oh gosh it's bad; Chikatilo[1] purged the nationalists and then the civil war happened. Whatever the current government is, it's bad - and reconstituting a cadre is going to take a long time. They may get a lot of Lithuanian-Americans taking their chances on moving back home.
The book is a scholarly biography of the Wright Brothers that I haven't actually sold yet - but if it does, it should hit bookstores in about two years or so! Thanks for the good sentiments.
5. I could see something like the Minitel system existing in the alt-US - perhaps everyone's just comfortably on Usenet by the 2000s.
4. There is recovery by now, yes, though it may not be a recovery that embraces modernity - after all, it seems to have proven itself false!
3. France[2] is recovering, albeit slowly. And you'd better believe there are diehard Bokassaites out there! He made this nation great.
2. IIRC Japan had a complicated history in the ATL but suffered no real tragedies beyond political division.
1. In the alt-2018, Obama is the Mayor of Chicago, Donald Trump the Mayor of New York City.
Switzerland[1] IIRC I did little of interest with them - if I'd known as much history then as I do now, I'd have had the Nazi invasion go ahead, and then the new, radicalized Swiss government go ahead with their abortive nuclear program in the 1950s...
A typical political race of FaT America as of 2016 would be between Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson.
[1] If I knew then what I know now about human nature, I'd have had his downfall go differently - we know now that bureaucrats can generally live with it if their leaders are caught committing unprecedented crimes.
[2] Another thing I'd have done differently - realistically more people would know about Equatorial Pork, but making people eat it for various reasons would be a _thing_ of the Bokassa regime. Yeah you know what's in it but eating it is part of your good government job. So you'll do it, right?