[4] Carr authored The Alienist, The Angel of Darkness, Casing the Promised Land, The Lessons of Terror, Killing Time, The Devil Soldier, The Italian Secretary, and The Legend of Broken, as well as 'My Beloved Monster', a memoir about his relationship with Masha, his half-wild Siberian Forest Cat.
His military and political writings appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, among them The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
[8][14] His father, whose famously turbulent childhood ended in a conviction for manslaughter, inflicted physical and emotional abuse upon his wife and children.
Speicher had three daughters from a previous marriage, and they and the three Carr brothers bonded, a group that Caleb would label "the dark Brady Bunch".
"Part of it was a desire to find violence that was, in the first place, directed toward some sort of purposeful end, and second, governed by a definable ethical code.
In 1980, Carr left Foreign Affairs to fine-tune and publish his first novel, Casing the Promised Land, a coming of age story about three young men in New York City.
Winner of the 1995 Anthony Award[27] for best first novel (although technically it was his second), the book, set in 1896 New York City follows the exploits of a small band of individuals determined to catch a serial killer.
Later, as The Alienist began taking shape in his imagination, Carr immersed himself in the history of the New York City neighborhoods in which he had grown up and biographies of its notable figures of the Nineteenth century.
Back in Los Angeles, he performed a page-one rewrite of William Wisher Jr.'s script for a prequel to The Exorcist for Morgan Creek Productions, resulting in a screenplay that attracted the legendary John Frankenheimer to direct, Liam Neeson to star, and the famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro to shoot.
But when Frankenheimer suddenly died and was replaced by Paul Schrader, who insisted on his own version of the script, Neeson abandoned the project and Carr, deeply disillusioned, returned to New York for the last time.
[26][29] For his next novel, Carr brought back the principals from The Alienist to solve another serial murder case in The Angel of Darkness, published in 1997.
[30] He also published widely recognized essays on the Somalia intervention ("The Consequences of Somalia"[31]) on the corruption and what he saw as the immorality of the CIA ("Aldrich Ames and the Conduct of American Intelligence"[32]), and the pointlessness of trying to pursue purely "humanitarian" military interventions, which the Clinton administration was trying to establish as a doctrine ("The Humanitarian Illusion"[33]), along with numerous other security and military policy pieces.
The characters travel from New York to the jungles of Africa in their quest to use such manipulation for the benefit of mankind, only to find themselves enmeshed in the central tragic paradox of their efforts, summed up best in a line from the book that is now a commonplace: "Information is not knowledge".
Although some agreed with USA Today that Killing Time was "a techno-terrifying tale of the information age run amok" and "a daring departure from the successful Alienist formula, but Carr is still a master of the cliffhanger, serving up a non-stop thrill ride as the story builds to a surprising finish", many found its stark view of information manipulation and its consequences too pessimistic, and the book was only briefly a New York Times bestseller.
[36] Published in 2002, this study of the history of terrorism from ancient Rome to the present was among the first to provide a precise definition of terrorism, one that has endured and made the book a landmark book in the field: Once again, reviews were extreme but mixed: some did not share the opinion of the Christian Science Monitor, which foretold correctly that, "After the deadly attacks against the United States, many Americans may now find Carr's earlier arguments prescient and his approach the only one that has a chance of working;"[37] instead, many critics agreed with Newsweek's opinion that, "The Lessons of Terror is so earnest, so well informed and so outrageous ... that almost any reader will find something to love and something that will make you want to throw the book across the room.
"[38] But the work achieved the influence among military historians, one of the most eminent of whom, John Lynn, subsequently declared, in his own ensuing volume, Battle: a History of Combat and Culture, that Carr's "insistence that Terrorism [sic] can be traced back to the ancient world and that great armies and great states have engaged in attacks on civilians designed to intimidate and terrorize them is important in both obvious and subtle ways",[39] as well as among terrorism experts, and the military and defense communities that Carr had sought; and it formed the basis of his deeper involvement in an advisory capacity for members of the government.
Shortly after its publication, he testified before the House Subcommittee on National Security,[40] met privately with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to discuss the future of the war on terrorism, and served as a guest speaker on every major network and many cable news outlets during the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
[43][44] In 2007, he again participated in the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program's Speakers Series speaking on the topic of anticipating counter insurgency in Iraq.
The Legend of Broken seamlessly blends epic adventure with serious research and asks questions that men and women grappled with in the Dark Ages and still do today.
"[50] Carr spent several years researching and writing his final novel, Surrender, New York, published August 23, 2016, by Penguin Random House.
[51] He stated, "This book is essentially a modern application of the principles and theories of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler to criminal behavior especially that directed at children.
Carr, tentatively hired on (pending his approval of the final scripts produced) as a consulting producer, commented, "After twenty years of tough struggle and countless failed attempts, I'm delighted that Paramount Television, Anonymous Content and TNT have decided to join forces and bring 'The Alienist' to life in what, based on the material I've read, has the potential to be a faithful and exciting TV series."
Hossein Amini, Gina Gionfriddo, E. Max Frye and John Sayles also joined the Paramount Television and Anonymous Content project as writers.
In response to the continued threats from ISIS near the end of 2015 and early in 2016, for example, Carr published a quartet of essays embodying once again his roots as a noted military scholar.
The first article, published in the Los Angeles Times, was "If France Wants to Succeed against Islamic State, it should Study the U. S. Invasion of Afghanistan".
[54] That was followed by "Let Europe Lead the War in Syria: History Counsels Caution for American Troops", published in the New York Daily News.
[55] Next, Vanity Fair published, "The Frantic Media Response to San Bernardino is Making Us Less Safe;"[56] and most recently, the Daily News published another essay of Carr's called, "Strangling Isis, Slowly but Surely" The last warned what Carr saw as an American public that has never fully recovered psychologically from the attacks of 9/11 that the Global War on Terrorism will never have "a Hiroshima moment", and should not attempt one; instead, victory will only be gained patiently and over a span of decades..[57] While Carr's early years at home were fraught with chaos and abuse, author James Chace, a childhood friend, stated the house was also "full of learning ...
[4][8] The late 1990s found Carr expanding his literary repertoire while working as librettist for the opera Merlin, a reinterpretation of the Arthurian legends, with his friend and composer, Ezequiel Vinao.
[58] Carr lived most of his life on Manhattan's Lower East Side, spending his summers and many weekends at his family's home in Cherry Plain, New York.