In the early 1960s, Dallas was full of extreme characters, many of them dead set against a Kennedy presidency—rabid politicos like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; oil baron H. L. Hunt; W. A. Criswell, leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world; and fanatical congressman Bruce Alger; along with a host of gangsters, civil rights leaders, billionaires, and marauding police. Beginning with the campaign for Kennedy’s election and set against a nation in transition, the authors ingeniously explore the swirling forces that led numerous friends and aides to warn the president against stopping in Dallas on his fateful trip to Texas.