Chinese American Historian and Journalist
Iris Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where she received her B.A. from the University of Illinois in 1989. After completing her graduate work at Johns Hopkins University, she wrote two critically acclaimed books published by Basic Books, Thread of the Silkworm and The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. The Rape of Nanking, an international bestseller, remained on the New York Times bestseller list for ten months and was cited by Bookman Review Syndicate as one of the best books of 1997. Iris Chang won the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Program on Peace and International Cooperation award, the 1998 OCAW National Woman of the Year award, and an honorary doctorate from the College of Wooster. Her third book, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History, was published by Viking Penguin in 2003.
