In December 1937, in what was then the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (Nanjing) and within weeks not only looted and burned the defenceless city, but systematically raped, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. The story of this atrocity continues to be denied by the Japanese government. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents in four different languages (many never before published), Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive, English language history of this episode.
Author Biography
Iris Chang was a journalism graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana. She worked briefly as a reporter in Chicago before winning a graduate fellowship to the writing seminars program at Johns Hopkins University. Her first book, THREAD OF THE SILKWORM, received world-wide critical acclaim. She received the John T. and Catherine D. McArthur Foundation's Program on Peace and International Cooperation award. She died in 2004.
