Ink-Stained for Life

“Walking with Lloyd through the pages of Ink-Stained for Life will make you laugh, and think, and cheer, and deeply feel what gives meaning to life. A page-turning jaunt of joy.”

— Ron Suskind

Pulitzer prize-winning author of A Hope in the Unseen, The One Percent Doctrine and Life, Animated

In the 1950s, America was coming of age. During the same time, in the North Bronx and within a Jewish family, so was Lloyd Sederer.

This is not exactly a log-cabin tale. Yet, in this story and essay collection, Sederer wrestles with everything—from family and family businesses to mischief, from playing music to gambling and running away from home, from rich people and Jewish people to cars and much more.

Through a unique juxtaposition of first-person stories and essays that further their theme, Sederer attempts to frame his childhood years within the pillars of mid-20^th century thought and values—that education, work, and enterprise were the formula for realizing the American dream, that family was the foundation for all of this, and how tradition is bred into our lives and tribes.

Through these tales from when he was 8 until 17, and their modern-day essay expositions, Sederer illustrates our times and the perspectives gained as a family man, a psychiatrist, and a public health doctor more than five decades later.

Lloyd Sederer, MD, is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Public Health.In 2013, Dr. Sederer was given the Irma Bland Award for Excellence in Teaching Residents by the American Psychiatric Association, which in 2009 had recognized him as the Psychiatric Administrator of the Year. He has been awarded a Scholar-in-Residence grant by the Rockefeller Foundation and an Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). In 2019, he received the Doctor of the Year award from The National Council on Behavioral Healthcare (representing over 3,000 mental health, addiction, and social service organizations serving over 10 million patients).He has published seven books for professional audiences and, with this book, six for lay audiences, as well as 500 articles in medical journals, non-medical publications, and book, film, TV, and theatre reviews. His writings have appeared in The New York Times / International Herald Tribune, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The NY Daily News, The Washington Post, The Boston Business Journal, Commonweal Magazine, and Psychology Today, among other publications. He was, for 7 years, the medical editor for Mental Health for the HuffPost, where over 250 of his posts and videos appeared. He also wrote a regular opinion column on mental health and the addictions for US News & World Report. He has taught medical writing for the lay public at Columbia Medical School for 18 sequential semesters.