Beneath the myths of Camelot lies the truth of the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Patrick J. Sloyan, a young wire-service reporter during the Kennedy administration, revisits the last year of JFK's presidency to reveal a ruthless politician.

As the president prepared for his 1964 reelection bid that never was, he buried the truth and manipulated public opinion. Using Kennedy's secret recordings of crucial White House meetings and interviews with key inside players, Sloyan reveals:

President Kennedy's complicity in the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, an event that planted the seed for a decade of jungle warfare and a nation dividedThe secret deal to resolve the Cuban missile crisis that contradicts the popularized "eyeball-to-eyeball" account of Kennedy's dramatic showdown with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who outfoxed the American president.Kennedy's hostile interactions with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the president's attempts to undermine the civil rights movement, which he viewed as destroying his reelection chances in the South