Jack El-Hai Books

Ace reportage on the unique relationship between a prison physician and one of the Third Reich's highest ranking officials.

"Sixty-six years ago, three brothers from North Minneapolis disappeared on a November afternoon and were never seen again. Based on a single cap found on the ice of the Mississippi River, investigators determined that Kenneth, Jr. (age 8), David (age 6), and Daniel (age 4) had drowned and closed the case immediately. Their parents, Betty and Kenneth Klein, weren't convinced by this hasty conclusion and never stopped looking for their boys, who they believed had been abducted--though their pleas to reopen the case year after year remained unsuccessful. Fifty-three years later, in 2014, an investigator named Jessica Miller and the Wright County Sheriff, with the help of the FBI, convinced the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to reopen the case based on their investigations which turned up information never found or considered by the original investigators. Miller and her fellow deputy Lance Salls concluded this was in fact a likely abduction, and identified a prime suspect (now deceased). It is one of the oldest criminal cold cases in US history to be reopened"-- Provided by publisher

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 twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Although many patients did not benefit from the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, others believed their lobotomies changed them for the better. Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.

In 1945, an improbable relationship between the fallen Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering, and ambitious US Army physician, Douglas Kelley, becomes a hazardous quest into the nature of evil, amid the devastation of Europe at the end of World War II

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. Do plechovky od kávy ukryl mosadzné fľaštičky so sklenenými kapsulami, ktoré obsahovali smrteľne jedovatý kyanid draselný. Ku Göringovi sa postupne pripojili predstavitelia elity nacistického režimu, ktorí sa pred tribunálom v Norimbergu mali zodpovedať za vojnové zločiny. O to, aby boli prominentní zajatci spôsobilí postaviť sa pred súd, sa mal postarať kapitán Douglas M. Kelley. Ambiciózny armádny psychiater si myslel, že sa mu núka jedinečná príležitosť objaviť u týchto arcizločincov charakteristickú črtu, ktorá by ich psychologicky odlišovala od zvyšku ľudstva. Lenže aj zlo má svoj šarm a pátranie po jeho podstate nabralo nečakaný rozmer, keď si Kelley vytvoril s Göringom blízky vzťah. Kniha vychádza z Kelleyho rozsiahlej zbierky osobných i profesionálnych dokumentov vrátane lekárskych záznamov obžalovaných nacistov, ktoré boli desaťročia ukryté.