Lost in America: A Journey With My Father

From Strand Bookstore

A memoir of the author's Jewish immigrant father, who came to New York from Russia at the turn of the twentieth century; by the M.D./author of 'How We Die.'

From the Publisher

The author of the National Book Award-winning How We Die offers a poignant account of his father's life, from the turn-of-the-century arrival of a young immigrant from Russia to his struggle to succeed in the face of poverty, tragedy, and illness, and candidly explores the ways in which his father's life influenced his own.

Review

Morris Dickstein - New York Times Book Review
"Like Henry Roth, Nuland is masterly at holding to the vulnerable son's point of view and keeping the reader inside this experience. He brilliantly conveys the inner experience of depression as an effect of the emotional dynamics of family life....LOST IN AMERICA may well be a great book, full of feelings and memories that ring true, including many I was startled to recognize from my own early life. It certainly reads like one of those confessions that heal the soul."

Review

Kirkus
"A dark, distressful, and deeply felt memoir of life with father....Charring and eloquent."

More about the book

Acclaimed medical writer Sherwin B. Nuland writes about his growing up in the East Bronx in the 1940s, and about his father, Meyer Nudelman, a deeply disappointed and angry man. Sherwin managed to escape his family's malevolent grip by getting accepted at Yale Medical School, but the subsequent depression was debilitating--and, ever since, Nuland has tried to understand his father as a way of understanding himself. This book--long in the making--is the result. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.