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WuDunn became the first Asian-American journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize, shared with her husband Nicholas Kristof for their New York Times coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Their reporting across Asia and the developing world convinced them that the oppression of women and girls was the defining moral issue of the 21st century, a conviction that became the basis for Half the Sky, one of the most influential books on global women’s rights published this century.
By Lisanne Swart · 3 books · Journalism & Global Affairs · Updated August 2026
Journalism · Global AffairsOn my shelf
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Co-written with Nicholas Kristof, this book documents the scale of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls globally — sex trafficking, maternal mortality, denied education — while also profiling women and grassroots organizations working to change it. A #1 New York Times bestseller that spawned a global movement and documentary series.
Deliberately structured around stories of resilience and change rather than only atrocity, on the argument that despair doesn’t move readers to act but concrete, achievable progress does.
Journalism · Global Affairs
A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity
A follow-up to Half the Sky, also co-written with Kristof, focused specifically on the evidence for what kinds of interventions and philanthropy actually work to lift people out of poverty, both in the U.S. and globally.
More explicitly practical than Half the Sky — organized around the research on effective giving and intervention, useful for readers who finished the first book wanting to know where to direct their energy.
Journalism · Social Issues
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope
Co-written with Kristof, this book turns the same reporting method toward the authors’ own home region — rural Yamhill County, Oregon — tracing what happened to Kristof’s childhood friends and neighbors amid deindustrialization, addiction, and poverty.
A deliberate turn from the global focus of their earlier books to American domestic decline, using personal relationships from Kristof’s childhood to make abstract statistics concrete.
