Shots rang out, and a city changed forever. Despite the hostility shown in the weeks leading up to Pres. John F. Kennedy's visit, the city of Dallas reeled in the aftermath of his death. The public perception of the region and its residents suffered a heavy blow, due in part to the media coverage of the community's reaction. This insightful portrait of one town struggling with its legacy details the transformation from the "city of hate" to the inspiration for the TV show Dallas and home of "America's team," the Dallas Cowboys. Tracing the profile of the city up through the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's death, this highly readable volume draws from extensive interviews with Dallasites and researchers.

For fifty years, Dallas has been indelibly associated with the death of a president. Thousands of books, tens of thousands of news stories, and hundreds of thousands of people have picked over every moment of November 1963. To a community looking for healing--and absolution--the proliferation of theories about the events and motives of the assassination made it difficult to be seen as anything other than "the city that killed Kennedy." This work also examines the effects of the assassination on individual Dallas citizens, including Jean Hill, James Tague, and Victoria Adams--the "girl on the stairs." From "Who shot JFK?" to "Who shot JR?," this intimate portrayal of Dallas's complex relationship with its past and present is a fascinating read.