Half The Sky

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, collaborated on Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a sobering look at the appalling conditions that women endure around the world and how contributions of time and money are making substantial changes on both an individual and a societal level. This book is Kristof and WuDunn's call to arms and I think it would be incredibly challenging to read it and not be moved to participate in some way to help the women and children profiled in its pages.

In topics varying from forced prostitution to unhealed obstetrical fistulas, Kristof and WuDunn take stock of the condition of women in third-world countries and the very real challenges to helping them in any meaningful way. They highlight people like Greg Mortensen (of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time fame) who are working in hostile or challenging environments to promote education and public health. They examine successes and failures in international aid approaches and after ripping your guts out with horrific stories of war survivors and rescued prostitutes, they let you know how you can help.

There's nothing light about this book. If Kristoff and WuDunn's intention is to stoke people into helping women, to raise consciousness to prompt action, they've succeeded brilliantly.

If I have one criticism of the book, it's that Kristoff and WuDunn are clearly liberals and at times, their policy analysis reeks of that bias. However, the focus of the book is NOT politics and it would be a mistake to ignore it on that basis.

Worth reading.