The Night of the Gun

Do we remember only the stories we can live with? The ones that make us look good in the rearview mirror? In The Night of the Gun, David Carr redefines memoir with the revelatory story of his years as an addict and chronicles his journey from crack-house regular to regular columnist for the New York Times. Built on sixty videotaped interviews, legal and medical records, and three years of reporting, The Night of the Gun is a ferocious tale that uses journalism to fact-check the past. Carr's investigation of his own history reveals that his odyssey through addiction, recovery, cancer, and life as a single parent was far more harrowing—and, in the end, more miraculous—than he allowed himself to remember. Over the course of the book, he digs his way through a past that continues to evolve as he reports it. "Always fascinating, often disturbing, sometimes darkly comic, David Carr's The Night of the Gun reinvents the memoir genre ..."—Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court "Gritty and compelling."—Richard Price, author of Clockers