Iris Chang was raised in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois in 1989 and a master's from Johns Hopkins University in 1991. She worked briefly as a reporter for Associated Press and The Chicago Tribune before landing a book contract at the age of 23. In 1995, she published her first book, "Thread of the Silkworm", about a Chinese-born physicist who pioneered China's missile program during the Cold War.
In 1997, Chang published the international bestseller "The Rape of Nanking", which described the torture and killing of 300,000 Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers in the former Chinese capital during an eight-week period in 1937. Chang, who was fluent in Mandarin, visited mass execution sites in Nanking, and videotaped interviews with survivors. The months that Chang spent documenting this horrific scenario took a physical and emotional toll. She became physically ill, losing weight and hair. Her third book, "The Chinese in America," was published in 2003, also to critical acclaim. It documented the history of Chinese immigrants and their descendants in the United States.
Chang lived in San Jose, California with her husband and 2-year-old son. During a trip to research her fourth book, about U.S. soldiers who fought the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II, she suffered a breakdown and was hospitalized. She continued to suffer from depression after she was released. On the morning of November 16, 2004, Chang was found along Highway 17 in Los Gatos, California, the victim of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot. 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.
