In “Three Roads Back,” Robert D. Richardson illuminates how early losses shaped the thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and William James.

William James made his home at 70 N. Pearl St., ... He is the author of several books, including political biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Albany Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd.

The scholars frame their work as a successor to William James’s masterpiece, “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (1902), which pioneered the scientific study of religion.