Iris Chang - Author.

“Iris Chang writes compellingly of Tsien’s fascinating life in Thread of the Silkworm…Her book reminds us that while we now know a great deal about China’s military hardware, we still need to know much more about the thinking of its military leaders and defense industry scientists.”
– front page, The Washington Post Book World.

“A PAGE-TURNER…Iris Chang, a freelance journalist, tells a fascinating tale in Thread of the Silkworm.”
– Los Angeles Times.

“Admirable in its clarity and sensitivity…Iris Chang presents a spellbinding biography of Tsien Hsue-shen.”
– Chicago Tribune.

“A truly engaging and poignant story…a lively account. Iris Chang follows Tsien’s life from his intellectually rigorous training in China to his prominence in US aeronautics and his subsequent fate at the hands of McCarthyism in the darkest years of recent US political history. Chang, a young writer commissioned to research Tsien’s life, brings to the task talent and enthusiasm as well as fluency in Mandarin Chinese. Her work should act as a stimulus and guide.”
– Nature.

“As a result of her command of Mandarin and her efforts to ferret out information about, and acquaintances of, Tsien in both countries, Chang has created a more complete picture of his life than has ever existed before. Thread of the Silkworm is also written with verve and style, making it a highly readable as well as solidly researched example of popular history.”
– Science.

“Chang tells a fascinating story and does so engagingly. Her book is not easy to put down…it is an excellent book and likely to be read for many years.”
– IEEE Spectrum.

“Tsien’s story is a saga worthy of Kafka… In Thread of the Silkworm author Iris Chang provides a fascinating biography.”
– Air and Space.

“Iris Chang’s Thread of the Silkworm is the highly readable story of the U.S.’s incredible and monumentally short-sighted blunder back in the 1950s…One of the strengths of Ms. Chang’s book is her ability to create a persuasive portrait of Tsien’s highly complex, extremely difficult personality.”
– Military Technical Journal.

“Tsien is a difficult subject for a biography, and Chang handles him well. She has managed a powerful and tragic picture of a highly gifted man caught in two of this century’s more destructive political movements.”
– Santa Barbara News-Press.

“The story is so well written and so fascinating that I could not stop reading through it even if it hurt my eyes…even a person with little interest or knowledge in science or Chinese history will find it a good read.”
– Chinese American Forum.

“[Tsien’s] amazing life, chronicled in a new book just released in the US, is a microcosm of the 20th century’s advances, not only in warfare but also in peaceful air and space travel.”
– South China Morning Post.

“Chang’s book tells the fascinating biography of Tsien Hsue-shen, a brilliant Chinese scientist who played a central role in American rocket and space science during World War II and its immediate aftermath, returned to China in the 1950s and played a central role in that country’s missile programs. Chang, a journalist fluent in Chinese, has carefully tapped a wide array of sources…With considerable delicacy, the author reveals the price a scientist may pay for vanity when immersed in a political world he understands less than he thinks.”
– Foreign Affairs.

“Chang weaves a fascinating tale of a proud man humbled by a government he once admired.”
– Face.

“Meticulous researched and superbly crafted…Chang has produced as revealing a portrait as we are likely to read short of Tsien coming forward on his own behalf. I highly recommend the book, which many will find hard to put down once started.”
– Space Times.

“Iris Chang’s Thread of the Silkworm brings Tsien’s tragic and triumphant life into focus for the first time…this biography is essential reading for anyone concerned about Asian political and security issues.”
– Far Eastern Economic Review.

“Tsien Hsue-shen, the father of the Chinese missile and space program, deserves a place beside Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun in the pantheon of rocketry. But no historian possessed the unique technical and linguistic skills needed to attempt his biography until Iris Chang. Her compelling tale is drenched in irony and implications for world politics in the post Cold War era.”
– Walter A. McDougall, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age.

“Iris Chang has written a captivating account of how a scion of a sild merchant family led to the development of the strategic missiles that have given China the status of a major power and the silkworm missiles that caused proliferation concerns. The full life of Tsien Hsue-shen, never told before, takes the reader through the missile age, from its beginning to the present. And Chan’s account of the remarkable rocket scientist illustrates how the excesses of the McCarthy era drove talent from America to the benefit of another nation, just as Nazi excesses expelled talent to the benefit of the allies.”
– Arnold Kramish, Manhattan Project Scientist and author of The Griffin.

“Thread of the Silkworm presents the results of Iris Chang’s intense job of two continents of historical sleuthing in archives and in people’s memories. She reveals Dr. Tsien as a twentieth century genius, standing astride both the rocket and the military technology of the United States and the People’s Republic of China. She describes twists of ironic change in Tsien’s life that leave a trial of biographical improbability comparable to Alice in Wonderland.”
– John Bluth, Jet Propulsion Laboratory historian.