Jack El-Hai

The Jeffers Petroglyphs: Historical Treasure in an Unexpected Place

by JackEl-Hai May 9, 2013

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor The Upper Midwest of the U.S. is not well known for its archaeological treasures, and it’s easy to see why. The region has utterly transformed over the past 200 years through the loss of 99 percent of its tall grass prairie, the felling of most of its original [...]

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Charles Dawes: Vice President, Nobel Winner and Musical Hit Maker

by JackEl-Hai April 9, 2013

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor Barry Manilow, Van Morrison, the Four Tops, Cass Elliot, Isaac Hayes, Bing Crosby and Nat “King” Cole all owe a lot to a now obscure United States vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner named Charles Dawes. Those musical artists, as well as dozens of others, recorded a [...]

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The Black Stork: A physician’s cinematic argument for eugenics

by JackEl-Hai March 8, 2013

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor One of the most infamous movies of the silent era, which made a case for allowing disabled infants to die, sparked a national debate between 1917 and the late 1920s before sinking into obscurity. Along the way, The Black Stork rocketed a physician to fame and symbolized America’s [...]

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The Man Who Played Hitler

by JackEl-Hai February 8, 2013

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor As a schoolboy, Bobby Watson sold peanuts amid the laughs and groans in the Olympic Theater in Springfield, Illinois. He soon became a vaudevillian himself, joined a traveling medicine show, and struggled to the stages of Broadway by the time he was 30. There Watson made his mark [...]

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Mr. President, a Visitor Is Here to See You

by JackEl-Hai January 9, 2013

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor Thousands of people will soon arrive in Washington, D.C., for President Obama’s inauguration. Who are the people who visit the nation’s capital to see the Chief Executive? For the past 70 years, researchers have wondered about the psychiatric makeup of the President’s visitors — especially those visitors who [...]

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12 Days: On the Trail of a Lobotomist

by JackEl-Hai December 11, 2012

by Jack El-Hai (Wonders & Marvels contributor) Like many of my literary quests, my book The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness began by chance and took a long time to complete. Back in 1996 I was the author of a single book about the collections [...]

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The Censorship of Titicut Follies

by JackEl-Hai November 9, 2012

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor Disturbing images fill the screen: a man confesses to sexually abusing his daughter, guards taunt a mental patient until he screams, a physician thrusts a grimy tube down a man’s throat for a force-feeding. These are some of the unforgettable scenes in Titicut Follies, a documentary by Frederick Wiseman that [...]

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America’s First Pop Psychologist

by JackEl-Hai October 9, 2012

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels Contributor When Joseph Jastrow died in 1944 at age 80, he was almost a forgotten figure in American psychology and certainly an irrelevant one to many minds. Decades earlier he had given up full-time work in academe, and his most recent writing, an analysis of the psychology of Adolf [...]

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Was There Any Truth in Truth Serum?

by JackEl-Hai September 9, 2012

by Jack El-Hai Remember the routine from black and white espionage dramas of the 1940s and ‘50s? The bad guys detain a suspected spy, who won’t talk even after a rough interrogation. Soon, after receiving an injection of a colorless liquid, he’s muttering uncontrollably, spilling the details of an entire network of agents. The truth [...]

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The Kangaroo’s Tale: How an errant elevator door ended an odd form of popular entertainment

by JackEl-Hai August 6, 2012

By Jack El-Hai (W&M Contributor) When an elevator door slammed shut at the Minneapolis Auditorium on March 20, 1940, an era of American entertainment came to a bloody end. The door crushed the six-foot-long tail of Peter the Great, a famed boxing kangaroo, who was touring the U.S. and had just demonstrated his skills to [...]

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