Okay, the fun's over.  You can only read so many suspense novels anyway.  Sooner or later you've got to return to the real world, which can be as scary as anything a novelist can dream up.  In fact, Kim Sung Il, the "Dear Leader" of North Korea is stranger than fiction.  So, if you want some real suspense, check the headlines, not the best-seller list.  Here are a couple of titles that could keep you up at night.

Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World, by Gordon Chang.  Random House, 2006.  $24.95, 327pp., ISBN 1-4000-6294-2

The idea that Kim, the cruel, bizarre, and reclusive tyrant who rules the gulag known as North Korea, possesses nuclear weapons is a chilling thought.  This is a man who starves his own people, sells drugs and weapons indiscriminately to rogue regimes and non-state actors, terrorizes his neighbors, and warns that "[i]f we lose, I will destroy the world."

Chang (The Coming Collapse of China) has lived in Hong Kong and China for nearly two decades, and has observed the Korean Peninsula from up close.  Here, he traces North Korea's descent into "the worst country in the world"—"an aberrant society of almost unimaginable cruelty"—under the rule of Kim Jong Il and his late father Kim Il Sung.  He also follows American policy toward the region since the Korean War and concludes that "through misjudgment and inattention . . . [the U.S.] allowed it to become a grave threat.

Chang acknowledges that there is no definitive proof that North Korea has atomic weapons.  His best guess, however, is that they have six-to-eight and are capable of producing them in large numbers soon.  And, "if the major powers can not stop Pyongyang, there is probably little point in continuing the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty)" because failure will encourage other rogue states—Iran, Syria, etc.—to seek their own nuclear weapons.

What, then, should the world do?  Here Chang falters.  He notes that if the world presented Kim with a united front, he would have no choice but to disarm.  Maybe, but since when has the world been united on anything?  Otherwise, Chang says that if the U.S. gave up its nuclear stockpile, that "would create the desire . . . on the part of other nations to disarm [Kim]."  The U.S. should unilaterally disarm?  How likely is that?  Well, Chang thinks that we should seriously consider it.  Otherwise, he notes ominously, that "it's unlikely" in the future that the U.S. can have nuclear weapons and New York City. 

North Korea and its "Dear Leader" are an enigma with no solution in sight.  Does Kim have WMD or are North Korea's nuclear claims a ruse to blackmail the world into providing more aid?   How close is the North to social unrest and how would Kim respond to such challenges?   Is Kim in danger of losing control of the country beyond Pyongyang?  What does Kim really want?  Chang raises these and many other intriguing questions.  Occasionally though, he lapses into a breezy style that is out-of-place for the seriousness of his subject.  He also is limited by the absence of reliable information about events in the North and is often reduced to speculation.  In the end, Chang raises questions that he can't answer.  So far, nobody else has either. 

America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, by Francis Fukuyama.  Yale University Press, 2006.  $25, 240pp., ISBN 0-300-11399-4

Francis Fukuyama must be a smart guy.  Just take a look at his resume:  Harvard Ph.D., former State Department official, Johns Hopkins professor.  Obviously someone worth listening to, right?  Right?

If you don't remember, Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man) was the genius who predicted the end of history back in the nineties.  With the collapse of Communism and no competing ideologies to liberal democracy and market capitalism on the horizon, he blithely announced the end of ideological conflict on a global scale.  Well, it didn't quite work out that way. 

But, Fukuyama wasn't fazed.  He's an intellectual and an academic—he has tenure, for God's sake—and inhabits a world where there's rarely any penalty for being wrong.  In fact, The End of History and the Last Man made him a celebrity of sorts in intellectual circles which helped him weather the fallout when history proved to be stubbornly alive.  

An adherent to the neo-conservative philosophy shared by many members of the Bush Administration, Fukuyama embraced notions such as regime change, preemption, and American exceptionalism.  As early as 1998, he signed a public letter to President Clinton—the eighteen signers included Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz—that advocated removing Saddam from power. 

Now, it seems that the professor has had a change of heart.  He claims in America at the Crossroads that as the Bush Administration prepared to invade Iraq in 2002 he "decided that the war didn't make sense."  He fails to note here that he didn't mention his reservations at the time.  In fact, he publicly praised the overthrow of Saddam in April 2003.  Maybe he forgot. 

Anyway, he says that he can no longer support the neo-conservative agenda, which he judges too apocalyptic and aggressive.  In its place, he recommends a new approach to foreign policy that he calls "realistic Wilsonianism." 

The war on terrorism isn't the threat that neo-conservatives insist, Fukuyama says.  It's not a "clash of civilizations," the "rogue state/proliferation threat" has been exaggerated, and the danger to our homeland is relatively remote.  In fact, the danger from terrorists is mostly isolated to Western Europe and Muslim countries.  We feel better already. 

Based on his threat assessment, Fukuyama's "realistic Wilsonianism" calls for "a dramatic demilitarization of American foreign policy," using soft power to promote political and economic reforms, and wedding our policy to global institutions.  In fact, the more the merrier.  The U.S. should, according to the professor, "promote a world populated by a large number of overlapping . . . international institutions." 

Fukuyama's credibility somehow survived The End of History and the Last Man.  America's credibility wouldn't survive his suggestions in America at the Crossroads.