Final Draft: The Collected Work of David Carr

David Carr

Apr 2020 · HarperCollins

About this ebook

“A revelatory collection reminding us of what journalism used to be—and what it ought to be.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Throughout his twenty-five-year career, David Carr was noted for his sharp and fearless observations, his uncanny sense of fairness and justice, and his remarkable compassion and wit. His writing was informed both by his own hardships as an addict and his intense love of the journalist’s craft. His range—from media politics to national politics, from rock ‘n’ roll celebrities to the unknown civil servants who make our daily lives function—was broad and often timeless. Edited by his widow, Jill Rooney Carr, and with an introduction by one of the many journalists David Carr mentored, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Final Draft is a career-spanning selection of the legendary reporter’s writing for the New York Times, Washington City Paper, New York Magazine, the Atlantic, and more.

“Wit, style, empathy, tough questions—it’s all here, in this collection by the one-man journalism school that was David Carr . . . Final Draft allows us to read decades of David’s best reportage about corruption, racism, celebrity, addiction, disease, and his love for his family, his skills only outdone by his humanity.” —Jake Tapper, CNN Chief Washington Correspondent

About the author

DAVID CARR was one of the most prolific and celebrated journalists of our time. Carr edited and wrote for a wide variety of publications, including the Twin City Reader in Minneapolis, the Washington City Paper, Inside.com, New York Magazine, the Atlantic, and the New York Times, where he created The Carpetbagger and the Media Equation columns. His memoir, The Night of the Gun, in which he chronicled his battles with substance addictions and his ultimate recovery, was a national bestseller. In 2015, Carr died at the age of 58. Ta-Nehisi Coates was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 30, 1975. He attended Howard University. He is a correspondent at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of The Beautiful Struggle and Between the World and Me, which won a National Book Award for nonfiction in 2015 and the 2016 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. He was included on Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.