In this detailed and compassionate book, Peter Schwab tallies the extreme costs of the U.S. embargo to ordinary Cubans, ranging from hunger to medicine shortages. Schwab frames his study with a discussion of the issue of human rights as differently perceived by socialist and capitalist systems, which leads him to characterize the embargo as a human rights violation. To demonstrate how the embargo has affected all levels of social policy, he outlines its destructive effects on health care, religion, and relations with Europe and eastern Caribbean nations. Yet, the author maintains, Cubans have retained some agency despite the power of the United States. He traces ways in which Castro has successfully countered the effects of the embargo, and how Cubans have found room for political dissent, even in education and the arts. Schwab brings his findings to bear on a series of forecasts for Cuba's future, including likely scenarios in which the embargo would remain after Castro and what would result from the elimination of the embargo.