Life of a Lone Gunman

It has been nearly six decades since President John F. Kennedy was cut down on the streets of Dallas by rifle shots fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, a "nut" and a "loser" by some accounts, but also a Marxist, defector to the Soviet Union, and admirer of Fidel Castro. The event shocked the nation and disrupted complacent assumptions about the stability of the American order. The assassin, whatever his motives might have been, delivered a blow to the American psyche with effects that lingered for years afterwards.