Jack El-Hai

The captivating story of the first face transplant at Mayo Clinic. For years, they came in on weekends to plan and practice—nearly sixty surgeons, nurses, and anaesthesiologists, preparing to harmonise 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...

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...

In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention centre in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by sixteen suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of 1 million in cash. Hidden in...