The story of the Pentagon's secret budget--the black budget. The first detailed look into the multibillion-dollar cache used to fund every defense program, every espionage mission, every weapon, and every war that the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Director of the CIA want erased from the public ledger and shielded from public debate.

“A bracing and intelligent reminder that, for all its woes, America remains extraordinarily dynamic, innovative, and resilient.”—Fareed Zakaria Hailed by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2013, The Myth of America’s Decline is a highly provocative look at how the United States, for all its failings, continues to be the leading business, political, and intellectual model for all other nations. In a world where America bashers constantly chortle that the United States is in decline, Josef Joffe, using lively historical examples and empirical economic models, demonstrates that these doomsday contentions are flawed, and that America—even when compared with a resurgent China—is the land where the future is being born.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a benchmark of triumph and a harbinger of tragedy to come. Rather than herald a new era of Cuba joining the world community of nations as a paragon of democracy as many fervently hoped and believed it would, it became instead a new stage in authoritarian rule in the Western hemisphere. For more than a half century since then Cuba has been defined by the capacity of a single family to command and determine the fate of a nation--and to do so with a minimum of opposition. Incredibly, even those professing adhesion to democratic norms have been ready to forgive the dictator his excesses. This volume explains the theory and practice of this absence of internal opposition and the persistence of external support for the Castro family and its entourage. "The Long Night of Dark Intent" is chronological in order, with the author indicating major points in each of the five decades covered. The volume covers five centers of system analysis: economics, politics, society, military, and ideology. Who or what "determines" events and decisions is the stuff of real history. It is precisely due to variability in causal chains in society that we have huge variance in levels of predictability. The course of the Cuban Revolution gives strong support for such an approach to the Castro Era. This is a unique, unflinching account with a strong emphasis on the importance of U.S. policy decisions over time.

Product Description Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? Explores the complex, tense, and historically loaded relationship between Europe and Israel. Over the years a fissure has developed between their political views. Many believe that it continues to widen and has become an abyss. The introductory essay and the following interviews combine together as a reconnaissance mission into the essence of European-Israeli political relations. In the essay, the author illustrates how Israel and often European Jewry have been made to pay for Europe’s major strategic mistakes in defense, energy, and immigration policies. Europe has acted against Israel through voting for one-sided UN resolutions, political statements from the EU and member countries, and EU financing of NGOs hostile to Israel. Israelis and Europeans should not, however, give up hope for better understanding. Israel should take the initiative to see how the damage can be limited without endangering its vital interests or remaining silent about European injustice toward it. In the second part of the book, fourteen interviewees from Europe, Israel, and the United States discuss major aspects of the European-Israeli relationship About the Author Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is Chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, editor of the Jewish Political Studies Review, and co-publisher of Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, Jerusalem Viewpoints, and Jewish Environmental Perspective serial publications. He has been an international business strategist for 40 years. His background is in chemistry, economics, environmental studies, and Jewish studies. Gerstenfeld is a former director in a consultancy whose other shareholders included four of the world’s largest banks. He has also been a board member of several public companies including a large investment company. The first of his previous nine books, which have been published in five languages, was the Italian bestseller Revaluing Italy. His other books are: Environment and Confusion; Israel’s New Future: Interviews; The State as a Business: Do-It-Yourself Political Forecasting; Judaism Environmentalism and the Environment; The Environment in the Jewish Tradition: A Sustainable World; Europe’s Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today’s Anti-Semitism; The New Cloths of European Anti-Semitism; and American Jewry’s Challenge: Conversations Confronting the 21st Century.