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.