Human Connections Light Up 'This Brilliant Darkness'

This Brilliant Darkness is a book born of insomnia. It's a collection of snapshots and written profiles by author Jeff Sharlet that take us deep into other people's lives.

And by doing that, Sharlet says, he's really trying to tell us his own story. "I originally sort of thought of it as a memoir through other people's lives. It's bookended by two heart attacks, my father's, and then two years later, my own," he says. "I'm a journalist, and my life was sort of falling apart and the only way I knew how to put it together was through stories. So it's a collection of the strangers whose stories I shared, they shared with me in those years between those heart attacks, and attempting to find a narrative