In the movie "The Godfather", Don Corleone, head of New York's powerful organized-crime family, is gunned down in daylight, leaving his sons Sonny and Michael, along with his adopted son, consigliere Tom Hagen, to chart a new course for the family. This book shows how the aging don is emblematic of cold-war American power on the decline.

"The Godfather Doctrine" draws clear and essential lessons from perhaps the greatest Hollywood movie ever made to illustrate America's changing geopolitical place in the world and how this country can best meet the momentous strategic challenges it faces.

"While the message of this work . . . is scarcely unique, its appearance and approach certainly are unusual. Made to resemble a US passport, this slim volume argues for a return to realism in US foreign policy by means of allegory based on the 1972 Francis Ford Coppola film The Godfather."