A Memoir
by Erin Lee Carr
Proof-backed recommendation
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Carr writes with a documentarian's eye for scene and dialogue, offering intimate, image-rich recollections about growing up with a larger-than-life parent and the fallout of addiction. What works best is emotional immediacy—several chapters land like short films, making family dynamics vividly tangible. The main limitation is uneven structure and repetition: confessions and similar anecdotes recur enough that readers seeking a tight chronology or clear conclusions may feel stalled. Best read as a personal reckoning rather than a how-to.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated June 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
An acclaimed documentary filmmaker comes to terms with her largerthanlife father, the late New York Times journalist David Carr, in this fierce memoir of love, addiction, 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...
Difficulty:hard
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View available editions on AmazonWhy recommended
Recommended by 3 sources and appears in Most Recommended Books and Nonfiction.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Judd Apatow
“All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir by Erin Lee Carr is a great book about her life and relationship with her father David Carr. It’s especially great about figuring out what career to pursue and the challenges she faced as a young documentarian. Get it!”
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Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
