Conn, the author of a previous book about a pair of brothers caught up in the Syrian civil war, no longer subscribes to the conservative Christianity in which he was raised, but he is still interested in men and intimacy. In “American Men,” he describes how four men “navigate the gap between the men we think we should be and the men we actually are.” The book is readable, empathetic and quietly profound, with, as he concedes, “no bold proclamations or grand theories.” In rotating chapters, he takes us inside the lives of Gideon, a white West Point graduate figuring out life after the military; Nate, an underemployed Black trans man looking for love and purpose in postindustrial Ohio; Ryan, a gay Native American with a penchant for bar fights; and Joseph, a married white law student with a traumatic past. (Conn has changed some of the men’s names and those of others around them to protect their privacy.)