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Title details for The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore - Wait list

The Secret History of Wonder Woman

by Jill Lepore
Jill Lepore
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A 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
Wonder Woman, created in 1941, is the most popular female superhero of all time. Aside from Superman and Batman, no superhero has lasted as long or commanded so vast and wildly passionate a following. Like every other superhero, Wonder Woman has a secret identity. Unlike every other superhero, she has also has a secret history.
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. 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. 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. The Marston family story is a tale of drama, intrigue, and irony. 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. 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.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a tour de force of intellectual and cultural history. 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    October 28, 2014

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780553551358
      • File size: 261720 KB
      • Duration: 09:05:14

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Like the lawyer who poorly represents himself at a trial, Jill Lepore is a poor choice to perform her landmark book on the bizarre backstory of Wonder Woman and her creator. Wonder Woman, a DC superhero known around the world, was created by William Moulton Marston, an egocentric polygamist with delusions of grandeur and strange ideas about womanhood. His obsession with bondage was evident in hundreds of Wonder Woman comics in the 1940s, a phenomenon that changed only after his death. Lepore's book is powerful, but her performance is poor. Her voice is sometimes screechy and quavering, and does not lend itself to male dialogue. But the book is amazing as it reveals Marston's desire to be dominated by women and his peculiar lifestyle with the two, possibly three, women who shared his home. M.S. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      February 1, 2015

      Lepore (Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin) presents a wide-ranging background story of the creation and mission of Wonder Woman (1941), the third longest-running comic book character in the United States. The beginning of the feminist movement, the evolution of comic book publishing, and the mores of the 1940s and 1950s are all discussed. Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, whose varied callings include academician, psychologist, and inventor of the lie-detector test. Much of the book discloses a profile of Marston that reveals a bizarre, strong-minded individual out of step with his time. The content is interesting and thorough, but the narration is poor. Lepore's voice has only a few ranges: her normal voice for most of the recording and another voice that becomes blustery and cartoonish for males or very high-pitched for females. This production would have greatly benefited from a professional narrator. VERDICT Not recommended. ["Fans interested in the background of the character and readers who appreciate well-written popular history will enjoy this thought-provoking volume," read the much more positive review of the Knopf hc, LJ 9/15/14.]--Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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