Books
Kristof's books, all co-authored with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, include China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power (1994), Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia and Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf, September 2009).
Among many of the motivations for writing Half the Sky Kristof explained to Jane Wales of the World Affairs Council of Northern California that the idea for the book was sparked by the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. After covering the protests, which resulted in some 500 deaths, Kristof and WuDunn were shocked to learn that roughly 39,000 Chinese girls died each year because they were not given the same access to food and medical care as boys. Yet WuDunn and Kristof could not find coverage of these deaths, even though they were far more numerous than the casualties at Tiananmen Square. That led them to dig deeper into questions of gender, Kristof said. Half the Sky covers topics such as sex trafficking and forced prostitution, contemporary slavery, gender-based violence, and rape as a weapon of war and method of justice, as it shines light on the multitude of ways women are oppressed and violated in the world.
Half the Sky immediately hit the best-seller lists. Carolyn See, the book critic of The Washington Post, said in her review: "Half the Sky is a call to arms, a call for help, a call for contributions, but also a call for volunteers. It asks us to open our eyes to this enormous humanitarian issue. It does so with exquisitely crafted prose and sensationally interesting material....I really do think this is one of the most important books I have ever reviewed." In Cleveland, a reviewer for The Plain Dealer said: "As Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" once catalyzed us to save our birds and better steward our earth, 'Half the Sky' stands to become a classic, spurring us to spare impoverished women these terrors, and elevate them to turn around the future of their nations." The Seattle Times review predicted that Half the Sky may "ignite a grass-roots revolution like the one that eliminated slavery." In CounterPunch, Charles R. Larson declared: "Half the Sky is the most important book that I have read since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962. I am not alone in saying that this is the most significant book that I have ever reviewed."
Read more about this topic: Nicholas D. Kristof
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