Fifty years after the killing of John F. Kennedy mass terrorism has largely replaced targeted murder as both the defining political act and cultural preoccupation of our times. A look back, from Dallas to Sarajevo, at what the assassin has meant to us.

Karyn Kupcinet, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Mary Pinchot Meyer had little in common in life. In death, however, they share one particular indignity: having their untimely ends overshadowed by the ever-churning John F. Kennedy conspiracy machine.

Impossible demands, security deposits, and a mounting sense of dread. Sholem goes apartment hunting.