Last fall, I read The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James for the first time. To do justice to my fanatical love for it would take thousands of words. I'll spare you.

It was so good, and so driven by James' appealing voice (the text was taken from a series of lectures he gave in the early 20th century) that it sent me scurrying to learn more about James himself. Luckily, Robert D. Richardson's William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism had recently been published in paperback.

I'll also spare you my theories about the different ways in which biographies can go wrong. Richardson avoids every possible pitfall. It doesn't hurt that his subject was a brilliant, ebullient man who helped found the philosophy of pragmatism, worked (often ahead of his time) in the field of psychology, and "took stairs two or three at a time until he was past fifty."

Richardson offers penetrating portraits of James' legendary family -- including his neurasthenic sister, Alice, and his world-famous novelist brother, Henry -- but it's William who lights up every page. I can't remember a book that brings a historical figure so vividly back to life.