Born in Princeton, N.J., in 1968 and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., Chang earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Illinois and a master's in science writing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Chang worked briefly as a reporter for The Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune before leaving daily journalism to pursue her own writing. At age 25, she published her first book, "Thread of the Silkworm," which tells the story of Tsien Hsue-shen, the Chinese-born physicist who pioneered China's missile program after being driven from the United States during the Cold War.
In 1997, Chang published the international bestseller "The Rape of Nanking," which described the rape, torture and killing of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers in the former Chinese capital during the late 1930s. "The Chinese in America," published last year, is a history of Chinese immigrants and their descendants in the United States.
The late historian Stephen Ambrose described Chang as "maybe the best young historian we've got, because she understands that to communicate history, you've got to tell the story in an interesting way."
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.
Chang continued to suffer from depression after she was released from the hospital. In a note to her family, she asked to be remembered as the person she was before she became ill -- "engaged with life, committed to her causes, her writing and her family," Rabiner said.
I guess that clinical depression could explain it. How very sad.
What a waste.
Such a loss..
I wonder if dealing with all of the trauma associated with her research did anything to push her over the edge? I imgagine it took years for her to write the book, and all that time spent on such horrific events had to have taken it's toll...
I am praying for your soul, Ms. Chang, and thank you for what you were able to do in your too short lifetime.
May God have Mercy on her soul and may she rest in peace.
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.