People like Caleb Carr

Caleb Carr (born August 2, 1955) is an American military historian and author. Carr is the second of three sons born to Lucien Carr and Francesca Von Hartz.

He authored The Alienist, The Angel of Darkness, The Lessons of Terror, Killing Time, The Devil Soldier, The Italian Secretary, and The Legend of Broken. He has taught military history at Bard College, and worked extensively in film, television, and the theater. His military and political writings have appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, among them The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in upstate New York.

He was born on August 2, 1955, in Manhattan, one of three sons born to Beat Generation figure Lucien Carr and Francesca von Hartz. Lucien's close circle of friends included William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, whom Lucien had known since his college days. Their frequent presence in the Carr household affected Carr's future career: "They were noisy drunks that were a disruption. They made me determined never to be a fiction writer". This reaffirmed an earlier sentiment in a 1997 interview, where he stated that, as a child, he "wanted nothing less than to be a fiction writer".