Half The Sky: How To Change The World - Nicholas D Kristof & Sheryl Wudunn

Book Review

In this book the authors detail poverty and human rights abuses such as rape and slavery in African and Asian countries through individual stories of people living their lives in struggle. The authors seek solutions and find them mostly through micro-development programmes. It is a book very much aimed at an American audience where problems are detailed, some ways to help are indicated, and here is what you, the American reader, can do. It is a format that does work quite well (reads a lot better than my explanation may suggest, by the way) and readers from other countries could make themselves just as useful. Most solutions include ways to help individual people and families raise their economic status which is obviously a good thing but I would contest the idea that this is a better way to deal with poverty than larger societal ways. Lots to think about and discuss with family, friends and workmates.