"New York Times" reporter and columnist Carr crafts a groundbreaking memoir on his years as an addict. Built on more than 50 videotaped interviews with people from his past, Carr's investigation of his own history reveals a past far more harrowing than he allowed himself to remember.

J.R. Moehringer grew up listening for a voice: the sound of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before J.R. spoke his first words. As a boy, he would press his ear to a radio, straining to hear the keys to his own identity. His mother was his world, his anchor, but he needed something else, something he couldn't name. So he turned to the bar on the corner, a grand old New York saloon that was a sanctuary for all types of men--cops and...