<DIV>Jack Pagano has always felt he is different. Smart and physically talented, the normal pursuits of youth--women and sports--have always come a little too easy to him and left him unfulfilled. At age seventeen, Jack is eager to leave high school and begin his college career.<br><BR>But the schooling that lies ahead of him is of a far different variety than he could have ever imagined.<br><BR>Albert Anastasia, the notorious leader of Murder, Inc., appears and claims Pagano as his son. But before Jack can make heads or tails of his new-found father, Anastasia is gunned down at the Park Sheraton Hotel.<br><BR>Under the tutelage of his late father's associates, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello, Jack enters a world where crime and politics, money and murder, and the American way of life are all but a hand's breadth apart and inextricably linked.<br><BR>At the same time, another father is grooming his son to further his plans: Joseph Kennedy, the patriarch of what will become American's ruling dynasty, has set his sights on the White House--and with the help of some old friends in Chicago, his son, also Jack, will rise to power.<br><BR>Then, one autumn day in Dallas...<BR></DIV>