[SuziQ]

Chang suffered a breakdown and was hospitalized during a recent trip researching her fourth book about U.S. soldiers who fought the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II, according to her former editor and agent Susan Rabiner.

I wonder if the subject just wore her down. A friend of my late parents was one of those soldiers in the Bataan Death March. He survived and came home to raise a family, but was haunted until his death by the experience.

[ConservativeGadfly]

I thought the same thing. My step-brother's grandfather was the ranking officer at Bataan and extra-special treatment was reserved for him.

In addition, my father spent a great deal of time in there in WWII as an OSS agent. Never got a lot of stories out of him, but the ones that I managed to wrest out of him explained why he slept with a gun under his bed until the day he died.

[reaganaut]

I wonder if the subject just wore her down.

Quite possibly, I am a death historian (Thanatologist) and there are times when you need to take a break from the subject, which is hard when you are trying to get a book done.

[dennisw]

You friend suffered first hand on the Bataan Death march. She suffered second hand and not physically via starvation and Jap cruelty. Nor the way the people of Nanking did.