There’s so much history I just don’t know, and that is not taught in American schools, but should be, like the Rape of Nanking. Historical fiction is a great way to learn while inhabiting a world gone by. Nanjing Requiem tells the horrific story of the Rape of Nanking: the invasion of Nanjing by the Japanese in 1937 that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women, children, and male civilians. For young women in particular, death might have been better than the brutal repeated sexual assaults committed nearly as often as the murders. Nanjing Requiem centers on Jinling Women’s College, under the wartime leadership of American missionary Minnie Vautrin, who sheltered ten thousand women and children during the war. Minnie was a real woman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie_Vautrin) who did her best during a wretched time, but blamed herself for not doing more. (Don’t read her Wikipedia page before the book if you don’t want a spoiler.) This is an important but brutal story, and you will be a better person for having read it.