The author explains why North Korea, though impoverished, nevertheless feels compelled to spend enormous amounts of its scarce resources on developing nuclear bombs and missiles capable of being delivered to the US, or at least to US allies. To most Americans this seems slightly bizarre. But Paone's conclusion is that North Korea is quite rational - it simply wants to DETER the US from doing the same thing as it did during the Korea War: killing three to six million Koreans; burning down hundreds of villages, towns and cities; and leaving behind tens of thousands to live the rest of their lives without limbs or with napalm deformed bodies. We in the US may have only vague recollections of the 36,000 Americans killed or the 93,000 wounded in that war; but the Koreans vividly remember their millions of dead and the countless deformed survivors. Paone sets forth his explanation primarily through American military-oriented sources; the diaries of US Generals; over 200 photos of war scenes taken by US Army and US Air Force personnel; daily Press Releases from General Douglas MacArthur's Command in Tokyo and finally American newspaper accounts.

Paone compares Israeli and American societies, including relevant laws, to determine whether they share "common core values" as claimed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an assumption which forms the foundation for American military and financial support of Israel. His analysis includes the topics of democracy, freedom of religion, equality, housing, freedom of speech and the rule of law. He concludes that not only do America and Israel not share any core values, but their principles are inherently incompatible. Paone suggests that Jewish Americans are the only ones with the capacity to deflect Israel from its present self-destructive course, because the U.S. government has lost all control over its creation. Though, Paone also notes, it may already be too late. The coalition of "know-nothing" ultra-orthodox, settlers and right-wing nationalists from the former Soviet Union are getting close to running Israel on its own, including, and this is most worrisome, its nuclear arsenal.

The author describes his visit to the Jewish settlement of Gilo in the West Bank that had been land owned by Christian Palesitians of the village of Beit Jala. It was here in 2005 that Senatory Hillary Clinton viewed the Wall being constructed around Bethlehem and approved of it. Paone describes the terrrible consequences of that wall and the opportunism of Clinton's blessing it.