Jack El-Hai
(He/Him)
As seen in:
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Scientific American,
The Daily Beast,
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Covers:
History, crime, science, and medicine.
THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST (adapted to NUREMBERG). Coming: THE CASE OF THE AUTOGRAPHED CORPSE. DAMN HISTORY. Bookstore: bookshop.org/shop/el-hai
Articles by Jack El-Hai
Co pozwoliło nazistom skazywać miliony ludzi na śmierć bez mrugnięcia okiem?
Plus Minus Psychiatra w więzieniu w Norymberdze Douglas Kelley potrafił znaleźć tylko dwie dziedziny, w których oskarżeni wykazywali daleko idące podobieństwa: pierwszą była niezwykła energia, jaką poświęcali swej pracy. Ponadto odkrył, że naziści koncentrowali się na celach swych działań, a nie dbali zbytnio o środki, jakimi je realizowali.
Nuremberg
"Nuremberg" - Estados Unidos Drama Puntúala Insertar Relata los famosos juicios llevados a cabo en Núremberg entre 1945 y 1946 por los Aliados contra el régimen nazi derrotado. La trama se centra en el trabajo de un psiquiatra militar, el Dr. Gustav Gilbert, encargado de evaluar a los nazis, y en el papel del Coronel John Amen, uno de los principales interrogadores durante el juicio.
Nürnberg
HomeKinoEmpfohlene FilmeEmpfohlene Historie Filme Im Kino | 2 Std. 29 Min. | Drama, Historie Regie: James Vanderbilt | Drehbuch: James Vanderbilt Besetzung: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Richard E. Grant Originaltitel: Nuremberg User-Wertung 3,5 10 Wertungen, 5 Kritiken Filmstarts Inhaltsangabe Der Zweite Weltkrieg ist vorüber, Nazideutschland geschlagen und nun soll den obersten Faschisten, die man noch lebend zu fassen bekam, der Prozess in Nürnberg gemacht werden.
Göring a psychiater - Osudové stretnutia s nacistickým zločincom
Domů Knihy Göring a psychiater - Osudové stretnutia s nacistickým zločincom Přehled Keď po svojom zajatí na konci druhej svetovej vojny prišiel ríšsky maršal Hermann Göring do amerického detenčného centra v Luxembursku, mal so sebou šestnásť kufrov a červenú krabicu s klobúkmi. V batožine si okrem iného priniesol medaily, drahokamy, dva nože na cigary, hodvábnu spodnú bielizeň a hotovosť v hodnote jedného milióna dolárov.
Damn History / June 2025
Issue 91: Obscured by Smoke Obscured by Smoke A wonderful writer and friend of mine named Burl Gilyard died in May 2025. Burl’s career was varied and admirable, and you can read about it here. His death made me recall that he is the only writer with whom I have collaborated in the creation of a magazine article. It began more than twenty years ago, when he and I decided we would enjoy writing something together.
Obscured by Smoke
A wonderful writer and friend of mine named Burl Gilyard died in May 2025. Burl’s career was varied and admirable, and you can read about it here. His death made me recall that he is the only writer with whom I have collaborated in the creation of a magazine article. It began more than twenty years ago, when he and I decided to write something together. We settled on telling the story of a painting by the French artist Fernand Léger and a dispute over its ownership.
Author tackles the story of Mayo's first face transplant
To give an idea of the scope and difficulty of Jack El-Hai's new book: He usually does three or four revisions. This one was more like 10 or 12. "It was a hard book to write," said El-Hai of "Face in the Mirror," which covers nearly 20 years - from 2006, when a Wyoming man named Andy Sandness shot himself in the head and immediately regretted it, to today, when he's a Minnesota resident and the recipient (in 2016) of the first-ever face transplant at Mayo Clinic.
Reading by Chance
My reading anxieties have remained constant since I was in the second grade. Back then, a class trip to the school library was agony. We had fifteen minutes to pick our book for the week. Although the library was not large — I could see the powder line on the librarian’s neck from across the room — its shelves held a couple thousand books, arranged by the Dewey decimal number system.
His lobotomy
A few weeks ago, I learned that a man I admired, Howard Dully, died on February 11, 2025. He was 76 years old and had been one of the youngest patients to receive a lobotomy from Walter Freeman, M.D. — the world’s most active developer and advocate of that controversial surgical treatment for people suffering from psychiatric disorders. Howard’s lobotomy happened in 1960, when he was twelve. I covered his disturbing case in my bookThe Lobotomist, a biography of Freeman.
New face, new life: Transplant opens door to second chances
In his long career, Jack El-Hai has told many riveting stories about the people and events making medical history. His forthcoming book, “Face in the Mirror: A Surgeon, a Patient, and the Remarkable Story of the First Face Transplant at Mayo Clinic,” is no exception. It’s a transformative tale about Andy Sandness, a Wyoming man who needed a new face after a suicide attempt, and Samir Mardini, M.D., the Mayo Clinic surgeon who led the care team that gave him one.
Face in the Mirror
For years, they came in on weekends to plan and practice—nearly sixty surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists, preparing to harmonize in a vast medical symphony. For the team at Mayo Clinic, it was their most complex surgery to date: a face transplant. At the heart of this event was Andy Sandness. He grappled with feelings of isolation and shame after a disfiguring suicide attempt but was determined to reclaim his future, to be seen as ordinary, and to belong again.
Damn History #89 / April 2025
Jack El-Hai · Follow 3 min read · -- My free monthly newsletter for readers and writers of history The HWK, my home for the past three months This week I have returned home after spending the past three months as a writer-in-residence at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, an institute for advanced study in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities in Delmenhorst, Germany.
Damn History #84 | November 2024
Jack El-Hai · Follow 3 min read · -- Would a psychiatric test have stopped Congressman John E. Rankin (Dem.-Mississippi)? As I wrote in my book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Douglas M. Kelley, M.D., had learned plenty about destructive heads of state and politicians by the late 1940s. A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, he had conducted psychiatric evaluations of the top German political and military leaders after World War II.
In Love with a Delusion
Jacob Moreno, the psychiatrist who created psychodrama group therapy, put on the therapeutic stage a patient infatuated with an imaginary lover In the early 1940s, a psychiatrist heard about a 23-year-old woman, Mary, who needed help. Her two sisters had spent years seeking therapy for Mary, but she resisted receiving any assistance. Nothing was wrong with her, Mary insisted. She fought off any suggestion that her love life had gone way off track.
How my article and book became a podcast
Twenty-seven years ago, I started researching one of the nation’s oldest active missing-child cases, a mystery that began less than four miles from my own house in Minneapolis. In 1951, three brothers — Kenneth Jr., 8, David, 6, and Danny Klein, 4 — vanished on a Saturday afternoon on their way to a park. The police investigated and closed the case after only five days, concluding that the boys drowned in the Mississippi River, more than a mile away from home, and that no foul play occurred.
An American Psychiatrist Recommends Mental Evaluations of Political Office Seekers
As I wrote in my book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Douglas M. Kelley, M.D., had learned plenty about destructive heads of state by the late 1940s. A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, he had conducted psychiatric evaluations of the top German political and military leaders held for trial at Nuremberg on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity after World War II.
Author of "The Lost Brothers", Jack El-Hai
About the event Author of "The Lost Brothers", Jack El-Hai This book, winner of the 2020 Best Book award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (history/biography), tells the story of one of the oldest known active missing-child investigations: the 1951 disappearance of the three Klein brothers in Minneapolis.
Tips on giving history talks
I’ve given many public talks about history — usually on topics connected to the subjects of my books. Speaking about history is an acquired skill. For those of you contemplating giving a history talk, I offer these tips: Don’t read aloud. Authors often believe that they must read out loud from their work, and many speakers read their presentations from printed pages or from PowerPoint slides, but doing so puts people to sleep.
They’re trying to make me into a novelist!
I’ll have a new book coming out a year from now. Titled Face in the Mirror: A Surgeon, a Patient, and a Second Chance at Life, it tells the story of Andy Sandness, a young man who underwent a face transplant at the Mayo Clinic in 2016. The publisher is Mayo Clinic Press. The book’s forthcoming release has me thinking about book talks, radio and podcast interviews, and all the other ways authors get word out about a new book.
Transporting audiences to times past
A few years ago I spent an afternoon in Paris with a wonderful French TV crew at work on a documentary about the Nazi leader Hermann Göring. Curiously, Göring — Hitler’s designated successor during most of World War II and a mastermind of the Gestapo, concentration camps, the Luftwaffe, and important aspects of the Holocaust — has been the subject of few documentaries. He will, however, be a focus of the forthcoming movie Nuremberg, which is adapted from my book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.
Death offers no ironclad protections for history writers
I sometimes joke that I like writing about history because dead people can’t sue for defamation and libel. But apparently, as public historian Jalane Schmidt discovered in 2019, death no longer offers guarantees against such lawsuits, however meritless and trivial they may be.
The question nobody ever asks
I wish people would more often ask why I like to write about history. I don’t recall anyone ever asking me that question. History wasn’t one of my academic interests in college. But as I began writing nonfiction in my twenties, I realized how few of my writing colleagues specialized in history. Even fewer of them did it well. History offered so many strange and remarkable stories and characters, and it is the perfect specialty for a writers who feel they are generalists at heart.
When the Best Books Aren’t
By my own unscientific but conservative estimate, 200,000 history books have been published in 2023. I have read nine of them. I doubt that any publication or organization has reviewed even 500, or 0.25 percent of the total. That leaves a lot of unexamined books whose merits are unknown. That’s why I am puzzled when I see lists of the best history books of the year. How could anyone know?
The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness
Login OR login with: Don't have an account? Sign Up For Free! Forgot Password Please type in your email address in order to receive an email with instructions on how to reset your password. Processing Please Don't Refresh the Page The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness has successfully been added to your shopping cart
Sense of Decency
Home » Season 42 » Sense of Decency World Premiere Featuring: Frank Corrado, Brendan Ford, and Lucy Davenport Jake Broder has crafted a surprise-filled exploration into what makes us tick, filled with unexpected revelations, magic, and insight. A world premiere theatrical foray into this historical meeting promises intrigue and theatrical sparks. After WWII ended, the Nuremberg trials began. Hermann Göring was the highest-ranking Nazi alive. American Army psychiatrist Dr. Douglas M.
The Case of the Autographed Corpse
This is the third in my series of Origins essays about the spark and development of my books, articles, and other works. You'll find the first in the series here and the second here.
Tips on writing a book proposal
By Jack El-Hai A book proposal is a marketing document that nonfiction authors write to sell a book idea to literary agents and book publishers. Book proposals take most authors months to complete and are unpleasant to write. It's spec work - you do not know if the effort will pay off in a book sale. I have written about ten...
The Sad Fate of the Clipper Ships
By Jack El-Hai Chapter 22 of The Clipper Ship Era (1910) by Arthur Hamilton Clark In our struggle to keep up with all the nonfiction writing published every day, we often lose sight of the remarkable popular-history articles and essays of the past. Many of them are worth remembering. The piece you can read below is one such notable work. I've previously republished another .
A town with two persons
The editor and the postmaster were its entire population In our struggle to keep up with all the nonfiction writing published every day, we often lose sight of the remarkable articles and essays of the past. Many of them are worth remembering. The piece you can read below is one such notable work. I first read it on the front page of the January 15, 1900, edition of the Evening Report newspaper of Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
Origins: The Lost Brothers
How I discovered, developed, and wrote an article, book, and podcast about one of history’s most puzzling disappearances of children. This is the second in my series of Origins essays about the spark and development of my books, articles, and other works. You’ll find the first in the series here. On November 9, 1997, a Sunday, I opened my local newspaper.
Three Nudist Sisters
By Jack El-Hai How I discovered, wrote, and sold a strikingly distinctive magazine article to The Atlantic In 2018, I published an article in The Atlantic about three middle-aged sisters, long estranged from one another, who reunited and grew close by becoming neighbors in a nudist camp. The article drew much attention and felt satisfying to write.
Where Are They Now?: Dean Barkley
During the 1990s, Dean Barkley was a tireless public-office aspirant and public servant in Minnesota. He founded the Independence Party, ran for the U.S. Senate three times as its candidate, led Jesse Ventura’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 1998 and co-chaired the subsequent transition committee, and accepted Ventura’s appointment to become the director of the state’s Office of Strategic and Long Range Planning.
Father Figure
Peter Ellenstein’s donated sperm produced 35 (and counting) kids who taught him how to be a dad For years, Peter Ellenstein never considered himself dad material. He is a 60-year-old resident of Los Angeles, an actor and stage director, who was short on money during the 1980s and ’90s and made cash by selling his sperm. His good looks and artistic background made his sperm a popular choice among people looking for a donor.
Father Figure
For years, Peter Ellenstein never considered himself dad material. He is a 60-year-old resident of Los Angeles, an actor and stage director, who was short on money during the 1980s and '90s and made cash by selling his sperm. His good looks and artistic background made his sperm a popular choice among people looking for a donor. He biologically fathered dozens of kids, not a singularly high number for the time.
Father Figure
By Jack El-Hai Peter Ellenstein's donated sperm produced 35 (and counting) kids who taught him how to be a dad Peter Ellenstein spending time with his biological children Alana, Courtney, Rachel, and Margaret (All photos courtesy of Peter Ellenstein) For years, Peter Ellenstein never considered himself dad material. He is a 60-year-old resident of Los Angeles, an actor and stage director, who was short on money during the 1980s and '90s and made cash by selling his sperm.
California Literary Review
Biography Walter Jackson Freeman was a man gifted with energy, optimism and an ice pick. The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness John Wiley & Sons, 368 pp. CLR [rating:5] The Management of Despair Walter Jackson Freeman was a man gifted with energy, optimism and an ice pick.
Putting words on the page can help physicians heal themselves
Several years ago, I received a phone call the night before a creative writing workshop I was leading for physicians. The concerned caller warned me that one of the workshop participants had been behaving erratically and might disrupt our class the next day. My workshop sponsor raised the possibility of postponing the class, but I decided not to. When the student I had been warned about arrived the next morning for the workshop, her anxiety was obvious. She appeared worked up and jittery.
Why I help physicians write
Several years ago, I stood before an audience at a neurosurgical conference to discuss my book The Lobotomist, a biography of Walter Freeman, MD, an advocate and promoter of the controversial treatment of lobotomy. I gave my talk, and it went well. I am not a physician — I’m a journalist and biographer who often writes about medicine, and I feel comfortable speaking at medical conferences, grand rounds sessions and medical school programs.
Minnesota Medical Association - Minnesota Medicine Magazine
1. View the Digital Edition on your desktop computer, tablet or smart phone. 2. View individual articles by clicking on the titles below. IN THIS ISSUE Minnesota Medicine has a new editing team of three medical editors and five medical advisors, bringing a breadth and depth of experience, perspectives and voices to our coverage. Meet the medical editors.
Don't Yell Shark
By Jack El-Hai Photo by Trish Hamme on Visualhunt On a summer day in 1980, a boy waded into the water at the 14th Street Beach in Ocean City, New Jersey. Dennis, a lifeguard, monitored the crowd as the boy bodysurfed. He dove, glided, plunged. The sun moved a notch. Then the boy walked out of the water streaming blood from his back. He needed 60 stitches. He thought he hit a submerged breakwater or pier.
Nights of the Living Dead
There were plenty of unpleasantries on St. Paul’s Pleasant Avenue in 1911, when a moustached ghost made life miserable for a widow and her family. Jack El-Hai · Follow 7 min read · Oct 22, 2021 -- Wikimedia Commons (public domain) Some people in the crowd believed the strange stories; others remained skeptical. All were curious. On February 18, 1911, scores of them gathered outside a home at 486 Pleasant Av. in St. Paul, Minnesota. Gawkers in automobiles strained for a clear view from the street.
Physician, Write to Heal Yourself
When physicians learn to write creatively, they see important and even career-saving results. Their reflections on their experiences and on what's meaningful in their life and work make them better physicians. If we think of our life experiences as a well to draw from in becoming a writer, physicians have an especially deep well. They are immersed in stories. They witness heroism, cures, and dramatic failures.
Instant Life
These latest pets in our household - following such predecessors as tadpoles, crickets, goldfish, cocooning butterflies, and ant-farm ants, all now deceased - came in a box sealed in plastic that I brought home from the shelf of a discount department store. My daughter Natalie, just eight, awaited me at the door when I returned home. The directions inside the box unfolded in small print on a narrow sheet of paper. Together we unpacked the kit, snapped green plastic...
A Righteous Crook
Wikimedia Commons, public domain Max Weisberg would have made lots of money at his funeral if only he had attended it alive. He would have circulated among and collected his weekly bets from the mourners, many of them stooped guys in sports jackets with their yarmulkes blowing off their heads. The Minnesota Twins were playing the Chicago White Sox that cloudy and sticky July day, and Max would have figured a point spread. The men would have drawn money from their wallets, Max would have…
Announcing honorees for the first-ever Damn History Article Award
I’m happy to announce that Damn History, my free monthly newsletter for readers and writers of popular history, has honored three popular-history writers for its first-ever annual Damn History Article Award. I began this award after noticing the scarcity of recognition for writers of history articles for nonscholarly and nonacademic readers. I wanted to draw attention to engagingly conceived, thoroughly researched, and superbly written popular-history articles published during the previous year.
Announcing a new popular-history writing award
I’m now in my fourth year of publishing the monthly Damn Historynewsletterfor readers and writers of popular history. It’s been rewarding to discover the enthusiasm with which people seek links to great history writing for non-scholars and non-academics and tips on research and writing, resources, and inspiration. Throughout it all, though, I have felt consternation over the scarcity of honors for writers of popular-history articles.
The Lobotomist
The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms.
Blazing His Own Trail with the Mandolin
About 20 years ago, mandolinist Peter Ostroushko experienced an epiphany while playing his repertoire of traditional American music at a Minneapolis coffeehouse. “I was going through stuff like ‘Blue Ridge Mountain Blues,’” Ostroushko explains.
A newsletter for readers and writers of popular history
This is the latest issue of my free monthly popular-history newsletter Damn History. If you enjoy it, please subscribe. Damn History Issue 39 February 2021 “The childish urge to understand everything doesn’t necessarily fade when the time approaches for you to do the most adult thing of all: vanish.” — Clive James * * * For a long time, I have noticed the scarcity of recognition for writers who create outstanding popular-history articles.
Comrades, We’ve Been Screwed!
One day in the summer of 1932, families sunbathing on a beach in Odessa, a southern port city of the Soviet Union, saw a sight new to them. Sprinting along the sand was “a dark amazon pursued by two or three of the darkest tallest and most giraffe-like males…all naked as birds and as frolicsome as Virginia hounds, diving like porpoises into the surf,” wrote an eyewitness, the American poet Langston Hughes. Portrait of Langston Hughes.
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