Lost in America

A Journey with My Father

By: Sherwin B. Nuland

Narrated by: Sherwin B. Nuland

He walks with me through every day of my life, in that unsteady, faltering gait that so embarrassed me when I was a boy. Always, he is holding fast to the upper part of my right arm . . . As we make our way together, my father—I called him Daddy when I was small, because it sounded American and that is how he so desperately wanted things to seem—is speaking in the idiosyncratic rhythms of a self-constructed English.

So Sherwin Nuland introduces Meyer Nudelman, his father, a man whose presence continues to haunt Nuland to this day. Meyer Nudelman came to America from Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, when he was nineteen. Pursuing the immigrant’s dream of a better life but finding the opposite, he lived an endless round of frustration, despair, anger, and loss: overwhelmed by the premature deaths of his first son and wife; his oldest surviving son disabled by rheumatic fever in his teens; his youngest son, Sherwin, dutiful but defiant, caring for him as his life, beset by illness and fierce bitterness, wound to its unalterable end.

Lost in America, Nuland’s harrowing and empathetic account of his father’s life, is equally revealing about the author himself. We see what it cost him to admit the inextricable ties between father and son and to accept the burden of his father’s legacy.

In Lost in America, Sherwin Nuland has written a memoir at once timeless and universal.©2003 Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland; (P)2003 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Lost in America is at once funny and heartbreaking, terrifying and lyrical, in its vivid evocation of growing up in a long-vanished immigrant Bronx. I think it is Nuland’s most powerful and beautiful book yet.”
—Oliver Sacks, author of Uncle Tungsten

“Sherwin B. Nuland’s gift is for depicting both the splendors of vitalism and the terrors of entropy in the human. His compassionate but total portrait of his father’s suffering life evokes for me much that was my own father’s frustrations. In a way, Nuland has written a dark epilogue to Philip Roth’s Patrimony, one of the essential American books.”
—Harold Bloom, author of Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

“Lost in America is a brutally honest book about a boy, his father, and the shared world they separately inhabit. It is gripping, utterly devoid of sentimentality, and disturbing to read. Yet from the bleakness of his childhood, Sherwin Nuland has written a beautiful memoir of psychological survival and the complexities of love, an unsparing look at shame, defiance, beholdenness, and the saving grace of the American dream. It is a powerful and important book, and deeply moving.”
—Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind

The plight of the immigrant's family

My grandparents were Russian immigrants who arrived in the United States just after the turn of the 20th century. My father was born before the Great Depression, but I wasn't born until he was 50 years old. I can relate to the feelings Dr. Nuland describes in this book. I had a similar relationship with my father, who spoke Russian as a child and was quite "old fashioned," as he did with his. But, listening to this book allowed me to understand my father's life better. His parents died before I was born, but I imagine his father was much like Meyer Nudleman. I gained an appreciation for the immigrant's hopes for his children's futures and, in my situation, my father passed on his unfullfilled aspirations onto me. Dr. Nuland reads his own book with emotion like no one else could. I cannot imagine any listener with dry eyes at the end of this compelling memoir.

Not worth the time.

Eh - not horrible, but I wouldn't recommend anyone invest the time. A whole lot of navel-gazing without much insight. Or, more accurately, without insight beyond alternating self-flagellation and criticism of his father. And Nuland violates the rule that no book should use "sui generis" and "hegemony" more than three times each.

1st gen. american's personal story of self,family

honest, unsparing and profoundly moving- perhaps more so for me as a grandchild of russian jewish immigrants. i could hear my grandparents through his rendition of yiddish-english. i was transported back to my childhood in an extended family that was lost as the generations move further and further away from the shtetl. perhaps most importantly, his book cut a window into the immigrant generation, and to my parents, and by doing so helped me along in my own journey towards understanding.


i binged listened to this book.

Exploring intergenerational legacies

I couldn't stop listening to this book. "Riveting" is an overused word but it describes this text. The author shares with us a stark, honest exploration of his family's history, dynamics and legacy of his parents' immigrant experience. His prose is clear and engaging, and the story he tells spares no one--least of all himself. This book helps me understand the tremendous price paid by this family of first and second generation immigrants in search of the American dream. And yet, in the end, it's a story of redemption and forgiveness and hope. A brave and healing tale.

The author Whines throughout

I tried to get through this book for a course on father/son relationships.
Finally gave up....too much whining throughout the book. He writes well and acts well but his whole premise is so boring. I grew up at that time and saw much worse.