It is a testament to their skills as writers and reporters that they've managed to write this call to action without having to raise their voices. The facts, as they learned long ago in China, speak loudly enough.

Half the Sky manages to be inspiring and engrossing rather than numbing.

An ancient Chinese proverb goes that women hold up half the sky. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn want that to be appreciated — on the ground. In the opening pages of this gripping call to conscience, the husband-and-wife team come out swinging: “Gendercide,” the daily slaughter of girls in the developing world, steals more lives in any given decade “than all the genocides of the 20th century.” No wonder Kristof and WuDunn, whose coverage of China for The New York Times won them a Pulitzer Prize, declare the global struggle for women’s equality “the paramount moral challenge” of our era.

Even with [its] stains, Half the Sky remains a thrilling manifesto for advancing freedom for hundreds of millions of human beings.