Like many illuminating histories, this one shows how issues we debate today were under contention just as vigorously decades ago, including birth control, sex education, the ways in which women can combine work and family, and the effects of ‘violent entertainment’ on children. The author, a professor of history at Harvard, places Wonder Woman squarely in the story of women’s rights in America-a cycle of rights won, lost and endlessly fought for again. Lepore’s lively, surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more than the story of a comic strip. In her hands, the Wonder Woman story unpacks not only a new cultural history of feminism, but a theory of history as well.” -Carla Kaplan, New York Times Book Review “Lepore’s brilliance lies in knowing what to do with the material she has.
Wonder Woman, Lepore argues, is the missing link in the history of the struggle for women’s rights-a chain of events that begins with the women’s suffrage campaigns of the early 1900s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later. The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a tour de force of intellectual and cultural history. Marston, internationally known as an expert on truth-he invented the lie detector test-lived a life of secrets, only to spill them on the pages of Wonder Woman. In the 1930s, Marston and Byrne wrote a regular column for Family Circle celebrating conventional family life, even as they themselves pursued lives of extraordinary nonconformity. The Marston family story is a tale of drama, intrigue, and irony. In the 1920s, Marston and his wife, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, brought into their home Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most influential feminists of the twentieth century. Beginning in his undergraduate years at Harvard, Marston was influenced by early suffragists and feminists, starting with Emmeline Pankhurst, who was banned from speaking on campus in 1911, when Marston was a freshman. Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman’s creator. Unlike every other superhero, she has also has a secret history. Like every other superhero, Wonder Woman has a secret identity.
Aside from Superman and Batman, no superhero has lasted as long or commanded so vast and wildly passionate a following. Wonder Woman, created in 1941, is the most popular female superhero of all time.
Includes a new afterword with fresh revelations based on never before seen letters and photographs from the Marston family’s papers, and 161 illustrations and 16 pages in full color.Ī riveting work of historical detection revealing that the origin of one of the world’s most iconic superheroes hides within it a fascinating family story-and a crucial history of twentieth-century feminism Even while celebrating conventional family life in a regular column that Marston and Byrne wrote for Family Circle, they themselves pursued lives of extraordinary nonconformity. In the 1920s, Marston and his wife brought into their home Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most influential feminists of the twentieth century. Lepore, a Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of Wonder Woman’s creator, William Moulton Marston. Wonder Woman, Jill Lepore argues, is the missing link in the history of the struggle for women’s rights-a chain of events that begins with the women’s suffrage campaigns of the early 1900s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later. The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a tour de force of intellectual and cultural history. “Everything you might want in a page-turner … skeletons in the closet, a believe-it-or-not weirdness in its biographical details, and something else that secretly powers even the most “serious” feminist history-fun.” - Entertainment Weekly Within the origin of one of the world’s most iconic superheroes hides a fascinating family story-and a crucial history of feminism in the twentieth-century.