The Woman Who Could Not Forget - Softcover

Chang, Ying-Ying

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1605983578 ISBN 13: 9781605983578

Publisher: Pegasus Books, 2012

Synopsis

The poignant story of the life and death of world-famous author and historian Iris Chang, as told by her mother.

Iris Chang's best-selling book The Rape of Nanking forever changed the way we view the Second World War in Asia. It all began with a photo of a river choked with the bodies of hundreds of Chinese civilians that shook Iris to her core. Who were these people? Why had this happened and how could their story have been lost to history? She could not shake that image from her head. She could not forget what she had seen.

A few short years later, Chang revealed this "second Holocaust" to the world. The Japanese atrocities against the people of Nanking were so extreme that a Nazi party leader based in China actually petitioned Hitler to ask the Japanese government to stop the massacre. But who was this woman that single-handedly swept away years of silence, secrecy and shame?

Her mother, Ying-Ying, provides an enlightened and nuanced look at her daughter, from Iris' home-made childhood newspaper, to her early years as a journalist and later, as a promising young historian, her struggles with her son's autism and her tragic suicide.

The Woman Who Could Not Forget cements Iris' legacy as one of the most extraordinary minds of her generation and reveals the depth and beauty of the bond between a mother and daughter.
16 pages of black & white photographs

About this title

About the Author:

Ying-Ying Chang is the mother of Iris Chang. She has a PhD from Harvard in biochemistry and was a research associate professor of microbiology at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign with her husband, Shau-Jin, a physics professor. She lives in San Jose, California and is on the board of the Iris Change Memorial Fund.

Richard Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-three books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award; and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in San Francisco.

Review:

“Iris’ punishing work habits (she sometimes stayed up for thirty-six hours at a time) and exhaustive research helped make The Rape of Nanking a groundbreaking book. After I finished reading this powerful memoir, a little jolt of electricity went through me; I realized that Iris Chang will not be forgotten.”
- San Francisco Chronicle

“Iris was twenty-nine when The Rape of Nanking settled onto the New York Times bestseller list, making her a literary sensation while conferring a connection to her roots that she hungered for.”
- San Jose Mercury News

About this edition

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1605983578
• ISBN 13: 9781605983578
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 472