A Path Appears

Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity

“Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing – but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.”

—Lu Xun, Chinese essayist, 1921

In their #1 New York Times best seller Half the Sky, husband-and-wife team Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn brought to light struggles faced by women and girls around the globe. A Path Appears is even more ambitious in scale: nothing less than a sweeping tapestry of people who are using research, evidence-based strategies, and brilliant ideas to make the world a better place.

With scrupulous research and on-the-ground reporting, the authors assay the art and science of giving, determine some of today’s most successful local and global initiatives to fight inequality, and evaluate particularly effective forms of help such as early childhood education. Intimately linked to this analysis are the astonishing stories the authors share from the front lines of social progress. We see the compelling, inspiring truth of how real people have changed the world, resoundingly upending the view that one person can’t make a difference.

We meet people like Dr. Gary Slutkin, who developed his landmark Cure Violence program to combat inner-city violence in the United States by applying principles of public health, and Lester Strong, who left a career as a high-powered television anchor to run an organization that engages older Americans as tutors in underprivileged public schools. A Path Appears makes clear how typical citizens can drive the momentum of worthy solutions to our world’s most pressing social problems. It is the roadmap we’ve all been waiting for.

These stories of real people struggling for survival and opportunity serve as a powerful reminder that poverty is complex and painful, but the call to action doesn’t need to be.
~Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

“This book is a class act. Its insights and honesty touch me on the deepest of levels and inspire me to raise my game to help the poor.” 
~Bill Hybels, founding pastor, Willow Creek Community Church

In the wrong hands, A Path Appears is a dangerous book: You wouldn’t want to leave it lying around where your teenager might glance at it. He might get diverted from that reassuring ambition to be a banker. Frankly, only scoundrels and saints can read this book safely: Everyone else will find it upsetting and uplifting in equal measure.

—The New York Times

The Authors

Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since November 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week. In 1990, Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, previously a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square movement. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006 for what the judges called “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur.” Kristof and WuDunn are authors of three best-selling books: China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power in 1994; Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia in 2000; and Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide in 2009.

Sheryl WuDunn

Sheryl WuDunn

Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize, is a business executive, lecturer, and best-selling author. Currently, she is a senior managing director with Mid-Market Securities, an investment banking boutique, helping growth companies, including those operating in the emerging markets. She also worked at The New York Times as both an executive and journalist: in management roles in both the Strategic Planning and Circulation Sales departments at The Times; as editor for international markets, energy and industry; as The Times’ first anchor of an evening news headline program for a digital cable TV channel, the Discovery-Times; and as a foreign correspondent for The Times in Tokyo and Beijing, where she wrote about economic, financial, political, and social issues. She is co-author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

Nobody clarifies the social challenges of our time, or the moral imperative to help meet them, better than Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

—President Bill Clinton

Buy the Book

Order your copy today!

Book Tour Dates

Starting in September, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn are traveling across the country for the launch of A Path Appears. Check here to see if they’ll be visiting your city.

 

 “Cold facts, flesh and blood stories - the written word is their loud hailer. They write, we read, and our world view is not the same. Nick and Sheryl’s meticulous arguments and free flowing eloquence is what inspires their readers to become activists…myself included.”

—Bono, lead singer of U2 and Co-Founder of ONE and (RED)

  • A Path Appears