Rating: 
Summary: Powerful and depply moving
Review: In an earlier book, Dr. Nuland told us How We Die. That book gave me some understand and comfort following my father's death. In this beautifully-written and heart-wrenching memoir, Dr. Nuland tries to come to terms with his own father's death and in doing so, managed to exorcise some demons.
This is a very brave memoir in that the author spares no one, including himself. It is at once brutally honest (sometimes so much so, that I had to stop reading) and incisive. His prose style--unusual for a doctor--is lyrical and succinct. He tells his story from a uniquely Jewish perspective (naturally) and so I wondered if readers with other religious affiliations would respond in the same way. Perhaps it doesn't matter. The book is a winner and I am enriched from having read it.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful and depply moving
Review: In an earlier book, Dr. Nuland told us How We Die. That book gave me some understand and comfort following my father's death. In this beautifully-written and heart-wrenching memoir, Dr. Nuland tries to come to terms with his own father's death and in doing so, managed to exorcise some demons.
This is a very brave memoir in that the author spares no one, including himself. It is at once brutally honest (sometimes so much so, that I had to stop reading) and incisive. His prose style--unusual for a doctor--is lyrical and succinct. He tells his story from a uniquely Jewish perspective (naturally) and so I wondered if readers with other religious affiliations would respond in the same way. Perhaps it doesn't matter. The book is a winner and I am enriched from having read it.
Rating:
Summary: Honest and Touching
Review: The hardest part of any memoir is for the author to honestly describe his or her own lowest moments, the sort when we hate them and feel sympathy for those they hurt. On these grounds alone, one must admire Nuland's honest assessment of his own situation growing up. The embarrassment children of immigrants feel at their parent's attachment to their old lives and inability to adapt to the new. The desire of the new generation to loose their ancestry and become truly American, contrasting with the older generations loss at never truly fitting in. Nuland's account is touching and honest. One feels for all of his characters deeply and cannot help but cry as many of the aspirations they share also pull them apart. Nuland's work can be read on two levels. The first, as an account of a particular group of immigrants, with all of their pain and joy brought to the fore through wonderfully poignant writing. Second, one sees how the immigrant experience transcends any particular group, and that what ever their point of origin, all immigrants share common aspirations and fears when they arrive on these shores. On either level, this brief page-turner is well worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Honest and Touching
Review: The hardest part of any memoir is for the author to honestly describe his or her own lowest moments, the sort when we hate them and feel sympathy for those they hurt. On these grounds alone, one must admire Nuland's honest assessment of his own situation growing up. The embarrassment children of immigrants feel at their parent's attachment to their old lives and inability to adapt to the new. The desire of the new generation to loose their ancestry and become truly American, contrasting with the older generations loss at never truly fitting in. Nuland's account is touching and honest. One feels for all of his characters deeply and cannot help but cry as many of the aspirations they share also pull them apart. Nuland's work can be read on two levels. The first, as an account of a particular group of immigrants, with all of their pain and joy brought to the fore through wonderfully poignant writing. Second, one sees how the immigrant experience transcends any particular group, and that what ever their point of origin, all immigrants share common aspirations and fears when they arrive on these shores. On either level, this brief page-turner is well worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Meyer Nudelman's answer: My-T-Fine
Review: The most touching part of this wonderfully-written book, for me, was the part about the pudding that Sherwin Nuland's father, Meyer Nudelman, made for his adult son. The bountiful offerings of pudding became a panacea, an effort to indulge a child both beloved and beleagured by his father. The book soars to its zenith with one short, simple and masterful understatement at the end of the first full paragraph on page 197. There were many other rewards, but for that alone, it was worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Meyer Nudelman's answer: My-T-Fine
Review: The most touching part of this wonderfully-written book, for me, was the part about the pudding that Sherwin Nuland's father, Meyer Nudelman, made for his adult son. The bountiful offerings of pudding became a panacea, an effort to indulge a child both beloved and beleagured by his father. The book soars to its zenith with one short, simple and masterful understatement at the end of the first full paragraph on page 197. There were many other rewards, but for that alone, it was worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Lost and Found in America
Review: This is a can't-put-down, heart rending, yet uplifting story of a poor Jewish family in New York durning the 30's, 40's, and 50's who are truly "lost". Out of the turmoil, love is ultimately the beacon for a discovery - a finding of self at great personal cost, but a finding, nonetheless. Nuland's sensitive ears and eyes carry the reader, not along, but into the very lives and daily goings-on of his family. His use of sounds within the language carry the reader into the very sense of the sometimes almost poetic text. For example, expect heavy use of b, d, g, p, and t sounds when the text is 'heavy' and many more f, l, m, n, v, and w sounds when the meaning is lighter. There is even occasional internal rhyme in the text; I particularly enjoyed gawgle-mawgle. The ingredients are there. Try one; you'll like it even though your waist line won't. In short, to miss this book is to be a bit lost in America, too, but to find it is to also be found.
Rating:
Summary: Illuminating and touching book
Review: This isn't the kind of book I normally read, but it was given to me before I went on vacation. I just picked it up one night and couldn't put it down. Nuland first takes the reader on a familiar journey as a son of poor immigrants struggling to survive in a new country. In widening circles of description, recognition, and, finally, illumination, Nuland allows the reader to accompany him in his own journey to understanding and perhaps forgiving the person who influenced his life so strongly. The book is funny and tragic and very very moving.
Rating:
Summary: Not to be missed.
Review: This wonderful book offers both a vivid depiction of a New York Jewish boyhood in the 1930s and 40s and a profoundly personal account of a successful surgeon, writer, and professor struggling to understand himself in his relationship to his difficult father. It is both clear-eyed and tender, and very human.
Rating:
Summary: Searing memoir and eulogy of love
Review: Whoa, this is a hard one. Lost in America, written by the gifted Nuland, is an ode to his father, a work of self-therapy for himself, a gift to his readers, and an offering to anyone looking for resolution and understanding of a difficult family situation.
Lost in America begins with the author admitting to coming under the grips of debilitating depression, and the writing of this book seems to have been his way of fighting out of that despair, of coming to terms with some of its causes, and of trying to explain all that went wrong with his father's life as a Jewish immigrant in America - and how those failures impacted Sherwin Nuland. The turning point comes with Nuland's discovery that his father suffered the mental and neurological effects of late-stage syphilis - and with his acceptance that happiness for him would be impossible.
Heartbreaking and oh, so beautifully written. But also difficult (on an emotional level) to read; you may find yourself putting it aside for a few days before wanting to continue. But persevere and read to the end. You won't regret it.
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