Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population. By Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. 329p. $37.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

One in six Chinese men is unlikely to ever find a wife, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing (p. 261). There are currently over 111 million more men in China than women, and 120 men to every 100 women in the 15–34 age category. India's skewed sex ratio is also rapidly approaching the 120:100 ratio. What happens to societies that explicitly select for disproportionate numbers of male offspring, through abortions of female fetuses, infanticide of girls, neglect of female infants, or other forms of direct and indirect violence against girls and women? It is to this question that Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer turn in their extensively researched and richly detailed book.