the secret history of wonder woman book review

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. 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. The Marston family story is a tale of drama, intrigue, and irony. 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.A fascinating look at a 'lost' period of 20th Century culture. To say Marston was a problematic personality would be putting it mildly and the life he led with the women who obviously loved him was, to say the least, unconventional. Lepore's in-depth study, which at times shows real life to be decidedly weirder than what may be found in the annals of DC Comics. How all this came about is the subject of Ms. Eventually he created the comic book character Wonder Woman, which became the third most popular superhero during the Golden Age of comic superheroes, right behind Batman and Superman. He was also a fervent feminist in the days when women were still going to jail for speaking out. William Moulton Marston was one of the early inventors of the Lie Detector (though his was not the model that came into common use). Even better when the connections all come together in one man and his circle of intimates. Any book that connects Margaret Sanger, lie detectors, and superheroes is bound to be interesting.

The secret history of wonder woman book review