BoingBoing reader Brent says:
Iris Chang, the acclaimed author of The Rape of Nanking was found dead today of an apparent self inflicted gun-wound in Northern California. The importance of her book cannot be overstated, and it's a true loss. Rumors, of course, are already flying that it may not have been suicide, but murder because of her next book which looked at American forces in Bataan. Rumors of course are rumors, and she was known for suffering from depression.
Snip from San Jose Mercury News coverage:
[Ignatius Ding, a retired engineer and personal friend] remembers her study, the room where she wrote, as "being like a shrine," its walls festooned with photos of Nanking atrocities, maps and documents."She would sit in there and just look at all those photographs," Ding said. "She was like a zombie." (…) Chang also wrote Thread of the Silkworm, a 1995 book about a Chinese scientist who was deported and later went on to create China's missile and space program.
