All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir

An acclaimed documentary filmmaker comes to terms with her larger-than-life father, the late New York Times journalist David Carr, in this fierce memoir of addiction and sobriety, work and family.

Dad: What will set you apart is not talent but will and a certain kind of humility. A willingness to let the world show you things that you play back as you grow as an artist. Talent is cheap.
Me: OK I will ponder these things. I am a Carr.
Dad: That should matter quite a bit, actually not the name but the guts of what that name means.

A celebrated journalist, bestselling author (The Night of the Gun), and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he suffered a fatal collapse in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, at age twenty-seven an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence-1,936 items in total-in search of comfort and support.

What started as an exercise in grief quickly grew into an active investigation: Did her father's writings contain the answers to the question of how to move forward in life and work without her biggest champion by her side? How could she fill the space left behind by a man who had come to embody journalistic integrity, rigor, and hard reporting, whose mentorship meant everything not just to her but to the many who served alongside him?

All That You Leave Behind is a poignant coming-of-age story that offers a raw and honest glimpse into the multilayered relationship between a daughter and a father. Through this lens, Erin comes to understand her own workplace missteps, existential crises, and relationship fails. While daughter and father bond over their mutual addictions and challenges with sobriety, it is their powerful sense of work and family that comes to ultimately define them.

This unique combination of Erin Lee Carr's earnest prose and her father's meaningful words offers a compelling read that shows us what it means to be vulnerable and lost, supported and found. It is a window into love, with all of its fierceness and frustrations.

Advance praise for All That You Leave Behind

"Erin Lee Carr's father, David, was an inimitable force in American journalism and a complex, boundlessly fascinating figure in her life. But what we learn in All That You Leave Behind is that Erin is just as much of an original as the man who raised her, and her sharp but tender-hearted debut memoir is perfect evidence of that. This book is wonderful."-Lena Dunham