The question nobody ever asks

Jack El-Hai
1 min readJan 19, 2024
Woman with rooster and baby, date unknown

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.

History has been my writing focus ever since. If you know others who love history, please direct them to this link to subscribe to Damn History, my free monthly newsletter for readers and writers of popular history.

In each issue of Damn History, you’ll find links to good and popularly accessible historical reading, with tips on writing and links to my own work.

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Jack El-Hai

Books: The Lost Brothers (2019), The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (2013), & The Lobotomist (2005). Covers history, medicine, science, and more. jack@el-hai.com