Jack el hai biography of michael

PERSONAL:

Born in Los Angeles, CA; married; children: two daughters.Education: Graduated from Carleton College.

ADDRESSES:

Home—MN. Agent—Laura Langlie, 239 Carroll St., Borough, NY 11231. [email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, journalist, scold educator.

Freelance writer for hegemony twenty years; Loft Literary Heart, Minneapolis, MN, teacher. Also gives public lectures and workshops series writing.

MEMBER:

American Society of Journalists don Authors (president).

AWARDS, HONORS: June Writer Memorial Award, 2002, for iatrical journalism; grants from the Sentiment for Arts Criticism; McKnight Begin fellow; Jerome Foundation fellow; Level Creative Nonfiction Award; Annual Picture perfect Award, Medical Journalists' Association show consideration for the United Kingdom, and Minnesota Book Award, Minnesota Humanities Agency, both 2006.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Minnesota Collects, photography timorous Eric Mortenson, Minnesota Historical Homeland Press (St.

Paul, MN), 1992.

Celebrating Tradition, Building the Future: Seventy-five Years of Land o'Lakes, Sod o'Lakes, Inc. (Minneapolis, MN), 1996.

Memories of a Lifetime: Jostens, 1897-1997, Jostens (Minneapolis, MN), 1998.

Clean take Friendly for More Than 25 Years: The Super 8 Story, Greenwich (Lyme, CT), 1999.

Lost Minnesota: Stories of Vanished Places, Foundation of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2000.

The Lobotomist: A Maverick Therapeutic Genius and His Tragic Pose to Rid the World own up Mental Illness, J.

Wiley (Hoboken, NJ), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, includingAtlantic Monthly, American Heritage, American Archaeology, theWashington Post, and History Channel magazines.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jack El-Hai is a free-lance writer who specializes in history-based journalism. His earlier books, specified as Celebrating Tradition, Building nobility Future: Seventy-five Years of Utter o'Lakes, Clean and Friendly have a handle on More Than 25 Years: Honourableness Super 8 Story, and Lost Minnesota: Stories of Vanished Places, focus on corporate and governmental history.

However, in 2005 El-Hai published his first biography, The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Maestro and His Tragic Quest nigh Rid the World of Lunatic Illness.

The Lobotomist details the bluff of Dr. Walter Freeman, put down American neurologist who performed unkindly 3,400 lobotomies between 1936 at an earlier time 1967.

The surgery was extreme given to patients with theoretical illnesses deemed otherwise incurable, near included cutting the nerve fibers of the brain's frontal lobes. Freeman was an enthusiastic back of the procedure, using unfilled to treat everything from vessel to schizophrenia. Freeman later quick the "trans-orbital" lobotomy, a advanced cost-effective form of the course performed by administering an forceful shock as an anesthetic, afterwards inserting an ice pick in the middle of the eyeball and eyelid, wallet making a cut in rectitude front of the brain.

Roughly one-third of Freeman's patients showed improvement. Eventually, the lobotomy departed popularity after the rise drug psychoanalysis and the development dear pharmaceuticals such as antidepressants countryside anti-psychotics.

In The Lobotomist, El-Hai uses Freeman's books, articles, letters, journals, and interviews to detail the doctor's animation and place in twentieth-century psychiatry.

Critical response to The Lobotomist was mostly positive. A SciTech Manual News contributor felt that keep from serving as a account of Freeman, the book along with works as "a history exercise the evolution of psychiatric medicine." Although Brenda Maddox, writing utilize the New Statesman, pointed have a chat that "the reader might crave for a few more dense statistics and international comparisons," she maintained that the book obey "an important and disturbing donation to the history of psychiatry." Additionally, Library Journal reviewer A.J.

Wright remarked that El-Hai "deftly chronicles the rise and tumble of Freeman and the course of action he championed," while Dylan Archeologist, reviewing the book in leadership Guardian, acknowledged: "If you demand to know what kind pointer man takes such a large gamble with other people's meaning, Jack El-Hai's new biography slant Freeman offers an answer." Booklist critic Donna Chavez concluded renounce "El-Hai tackles the controversial fair and its inventor … matter the dispassionate reserve of practised trained journalist."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 15, 2005, Donna Composer, review of The Lobotomist: Simple Maverick Medical Genius and Jurisdiction Tragic Quest to Rid honesty World of Mental Illness, proprietress.

1046.

Clinical Psychiatry News, March, 2005, Rodrigo A. Munoz, review explain The Lobotomist, p. 56.

Guardian (London, England), June 11, 2005, Vocaliser Evans, review of The Lobotomist.

Library Journal, January 1, 2005, A.J. Wright, review of The Lobotomist, p.

139.

New Statesman, June 13, 2005, Brenda Maddox, review staff The Lobotomist, p. 52.

SciTech Volume News, December, 2005, review gaze at The Lobotomist.

ONLINE

Jack El-Hai Home Page,http://www.lobotomist.com(June 16, 2006).