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From the time he was born, just weeks after his father’s 1960 election, John F. Kennedy Jr. grew up under a relentless spotlight, privileged and burdened by the magnitude of his family mythology. After President Kennedy was assassinated at the age of 46, young John came to embody for many Americans the optimism and promise his father had brought to the nation. It was a promise he took seriously and struggled to meet.

But in the last year of John Jr.’s own short life, things were anything but Camelot-like. His best friend, cousin Anthony Radziwill, was dying from cancer. His magazine George , which celebrated the intersection of politics and pop culture, was failing. His marriage to Carolyn Bessette , under the relentless glare of paparazzi c

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