  We study a brane configuration of D4-branes and NS5-branes in weakly coupled
type IIA string theory, which describes in a particular limit d=4 N=1 SU(N+p)
supersymmetric QCD with 2N flavors and a quartic superpotential. We describe
the geometric realization of the supersymmetric vacuum structure of this gauge
theory. We focus on the confining vacua of the gauge theory, whose holographic
description is given by the MQCD brane configuration in the near-horizon
geometry of N D4-branes. This description, which gives an embedding of MQCD
into a field theory decoupled from gravity, is valid for 1 << p << N, in the
limit of large five dimensional `t Hooft couplings for the color and flavor
groups. We analyze various properties of the theory in this limit, such as the
spectrum of mesons, the finite temperature behavior, and the quark-anti-quark
potential. We also discuss the same brane configuration on a circle, where it
gives a geometric description of the moduli space of the Klebanov-Strassler
cascading theory, and some non-supersymmetric generalizations.
