James Piereson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, and a frequent contributor to various journals and newspapers, including The New Criterion, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and The Wall Street Journal. He is editor of The Pursuit of Liberty: Can the Institutions that Made America Great Serve as a Model for the World? He lives in New York City.

James Piereson examines the bizarre aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination: Why in the years after the assassination did the American Left become preoccupied with conspiratorial thinking? How and why was Kennedy transformed in death into a liberal icon and a martyr for civil rights? In what way was the assassination linked to the collapse of mid-century liberalism, a doctrine which until 1963 was the reigning philosophy of the nation?