In the Roaring Twenties, Edward Cumming might have become a railroad businessman, but he was more interested in literature. During the Depression, he tried to write a book about historical castrations. At thirty-nine, he died by suicide. What went wrong for him? A lack of focus? A problem of fate? The number forty? Or was his book haunted? In this train ride of an American biography, Tucker Lieberman tells the story of the would-be...