[First paragraph] Cuba: Confronting the U.S. Embargo. PETER SCHWAB. New York: St. Martin's, 1999. xiii + 226 pp. (Cloth US$ 29.95) Presidential Decision Making Adrift: The Carter Administration and the Mariel Boatlift. DAVID W. ENGSTROM. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. x + 239 pp. (Paper US$25.95) Fleeing Castro: Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children's Program. VICTOR ANDRES TRIAY. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998. xiv + 126 pp. (Cloth US$ 49.95, Paper US$ 14.95) Some forty years after it was first imposed in 1960 in the midst of the cold war, the U.S. embargo against Cuba remains the defining feature of U.S.-Cuban relations. Like the Berlin Wall, the embargo is both a symbolic and a physical barrier keeping apart two neighbors destined to move closer. Unlike the Berlin Wall which feil at the end of the cold war, the U.S. embargo against Cuba still stands.