Mariani, a journalist and former English professor, has grappled with both the psychological burdens of a motherless childhood, raised by “a father who loved my sister and me but who was also aloof and alone, forever at a wraithlike remove,” and the physical malady of chronic fatigue syndrome. Though he tends to linger too often on his own troubles, most of the subjects he profiles in the book have had it worse—e.g., a woman who was raped, two men who … Read the rest