Iris Chang

In very sad news, popular historian Iris Chang was found dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot in her car on a California highway this morning. Ms. Chang will be most remembered for The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, her meticulous, unflinching account of the occupation of the Chinese city of Nanking by the Japanese Imperial Army.

[Ms. Chang's] agent Susan Rabiner said she suffered a breakdown during research for her latest book about US soldiers fighting the Japanese in the Philippines.
She continued to suffer from depressesion after leaving the hospital, and in a note to her family asked to be remembered for the person she was before she fell ill.
The late historian Stephen Ambrose described Chang as "maybe the best historian we've got."

Ms. Chang was 36.