The Secret History of Wonder Woman

I listened to the Fresh Air podcast about this book (titled after the book itself) and loved hearing about this largely unknown aspect of Wonder Woman. Shortly after I decided to find a full book because I wanted to learn even more. The writing style of this book was so horrible that I didn't make it more than 3% before giving up. Save your money and listen to the free podcast featuring the author rather than wasting money here. Sentences felt poorly constructed and awkward. I couldn't even follow the timeline of Wonder Woman's creator because the author jumped around with random facts so much (first bringing up how the creator was suicidal, then backtracking childhood and finally leading up to college where his suicidal thoughts emerged, then talking about the class that drove him to consider suicide, then cutting sharply to the one class that he loved before explaining the method by which he would attempt suicide...dude). It seemed like she wanted to have a specific sounding "voice" as well - maybe old-timey? Something about the words she chose and the manner she "spoke" felt extremely forced. In any case, it drove me crazy. It's very rare that I detest a book enough to return it. Definitely download the sample before buying the whole thing.

It's an interesting read, but incredibly annoying. The creator of Wonder Woman is at first presented as a champion of women's liberation. From my point of view he was an exploiter of women and his creation worse than irrelevant. It was just another way to make money off of women's sexuality. He was charismatic and talented and accomplished women fell for his bulls***.

This was a selection of our book club. I learned that my Kindle doesn't do well with books that have photos or pictures...but a lot of the pictures weren't really necessary. The book felt more like a reference paper...lots of quotes...again not really necessary. I'm not quite sure what the point of the book was...it did point out that women;s rights have had a long struggle which seems to ebb and flow...up in the late 20's when the vote for women passed...then quiet ....then up during the 40's and WWII and then up again in the late 60's etc.

Bought this book as a gift for a relative that was always big on comic books, especially DC, and the history of the characters. In a nutshell, she wasn't impressed. Too boring. Even though Wonder Woman became a feminist icon, the emphasis on this part of her is presented in an uninteresting fashion and on the whole, considering the discussion as about a comic-book character, it seems in this case the author is reading too much into it, pardon the pun. A book half this lengthy might have been easier to digest. For someone interested in the purely political-feminist aspect of the character, I'm sure this would be worthwhile, but for those that would rather just read the classics and have fun doing it, you're better off sticking to lighter fare.

I got very tired of reading it. Seemed to have every bit of information Jill Lepore found. I didn't need everything every bit of information. I wanted a good story about the development of wonder woman instead of a dry dissertation. Did not finish it, but I am not a non-fiction fan.

I enjoyed many parts of this book, but I think it was poorly organized and a real hodge podge. Lepore fills up pages with all kinds of peripheral matter. Her style is very casual. The book is poorly organized and in some cases I was confused. The author is a Harvard professor, but she still could have used a good editor. The book felt like it had been written any old way, just to get it finished.

Three is a lot of interesting material about the history of the feminist movement and also about the history of comics. The book at times is very disorganized and chaotic with a lot of shifting between characters, some of whom are not very interesting. Could have used a good editor. The illustrations are wonderful.

It was excitement to learn about Wonder Woman that caused me to vote for this book as a book group choice. Wonder Woman's life span pretty much coincides with my own. My great disappointment lies in the first 150 +/- pages which contain a mishmash of redundant detailed random information about the Marston family. It felt like I was reading a freshman report on a worthy topic, for which the author could not allow herself to leave out any 'fact' she uncovered during her research and wrote the facts in the order encountered. My poor brain had to constantly reorganize and rearrange the information again and again to have it make sense. I believe this "preface" could have been reduced by 2/3 without losing any content. By page 184 I was relieved to see the book really does contain worthwhile Wonder Woman information. I found myself thoroughly disliking exuberantly-feminist Mr. Marston; and pitying poor Holloway, who supported that curious collection of 'enlightened' souls that lived together at Cherry Orchard. While I appreciate the liberal use of illustrations and photos, the text on many of tiny Wonder Woman boxes and boxed documents was so small it requires a magnifying glass to read them,.

I did not feel the story flowed logically. I did not like the writing style. It seemed as though the author was doing research and wrote down the facts as they were found without making the manuscript readable.

With "The Secret History of Wonder Woman" Jill Lepore has greatly strengthened the oft ignored legacy of comic books as an important agent of cultural change in the 20th century. Since their inception in the early 1930's as collections of comic strips through the billion dollar mega-films of today, comic books have been beloved and loathed like no other media.

At their peak in the 1940s a comic book might have sold 2 million or more copies. Each single comic was estimated to be read by as many as 6 people. At any one time there were thought to be 100,000,000 comic being read. These were numbers delightful to publishers and fans but terrifying to educators, politicians, scientists and parents. The concern from the "authorities" is somewhat justified. Kids were devouring comics and with the astronomic readership numbers it was hard to imagine how generations of young minds were being shaped by the illustrated insanity in their pages.

William Moulton Marston was a man made for this exploding cacophony of four color madness. His creation of Wonder Woman became the perfect storm for so many cultural, scientific and political upheavals that a reasonable argument can be made had the the storeian Princess never been born America would be a different place.

Marston dumped his bohemian and erratic life experience as a scientist (the creator of the lie detector), a psychologist, a bigamist (sort of), a fetishist and an ardent feminist into the development of Wonder Woman with the clear intention of influencing the direction of popular culture. Lepore's excellently researched and fully supported premise is he succeeded in doing just that.

Lepore draws parallels between the development of the politics of feminism beginning with the suffragette movements of the late 19th century, the life of Charles Marston and the development and explosive popularity of comic books. With great skill and wonderful prose she brings these three distinct tracks of history together to culminate in the arrival of the the store Princess to the world of man. Wonder Woman came to America at the beginning of World War II and quickly soared in popularity, rivaling that of comic superstars Superman and Batman. The difference between them was Diana Prince, Wonder Woman's secret identity, was a free thinker and an agent for social change.

Marston imbued his character with a power and sexuality based not only on her strength but also on her vulnerabilities. That Marston and DC got away with as much as they did is remarkable considering the times. With a historian's eye on cultural context Lepore demonstrates how truly radical Marston's Wonder Woman comics really were. To her credit, Lepore very fairly provides a voice to those who, with some cause, found Wonder Woman objectionable and dangerous.

The most amazing thing about the book is the incredible research Lepore has poured into it. It is well known now that Marston had both a wife and a live in mistress with his children from both all living peacefully in the same household, but that is about the extent of the public's knowledge. In fact the reality is much more complicated and the personalities in this family are so intensely entwined as to have made them interdependent on each other for their entire lives.

The fact Wonder Woman exists at all is tied up (ha!) in the relationships between each individual in the family. The dynamic in this strange household is remarkable but many of the details have remained closely guarded family secrets until recently. Lepore's masterful mining of data is to be commended and stands as an example of thoughtful and responsible journalism. Lepore must also be commended for her even handed treatment of divisive issues like feminism, fetishism and pop psychology. Her book does not force an agenda. It is a rare example of a historian being a historian for the sake of recording history.

The Marston era is unique and remarkable not only in the history of Wonder Woman but in the history of comic books and indeed in the history of all western popular culture. Wonder Woman comics today sell around 60,000 copies (compared to well over one million in the 40s). When Marston died in 1947 and the character was turned over to more compliant writers Wonder Woman began a rapid metamorphosis leading to a more saccharine vision of domesticity and conformity. Today she is a warrior princess and in every way an equal to Superman. As of this writing they are lovers (Batman is wisely concerned about this). Its hard to imagine what Marston would have thought of that.

On a personal note, I have been a big fan of Wonder Woman for much of my life. Back in the early 70s I started buying Wonder Woman comics and have quite an extensive collection. Of course the earlier Golden Age books (40s & 50s) are out of my price range but DC Comics has produced Wonder Woman Archive editions containing nearly all of Marston's work. I went back and reread some of the stories in these books and was absolutely stunned at how much more complex and fascinating the stories were given an understanding of the background and intentions of the creator. Some of these volumes are out of print, but many can still be found at very reasonable prices. I heartily recommend going back and reading some of this material for yourself. At the end of the book along with extensive footnotes (which contain some fun, meaty facts not in the regular text) there is an excellent index of stories written by Marston and the issues in which they appeared. I am very grateful to Jill Lepore for writing this book and giving me the opportunity to enjoy these great comic books more than ever.

I am also grateful to Jill Lepore for her contribution to recognizing the immensity of the sociological impact comic books have had on western culture over the last 80+ years. If you are interested in pursuing this further, another recent example of this kind of comic book scholarship which I very much enjoyed is Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster--the Creators of Superman.

The first third of the book was fascinating, but I kept expecting some more about our title character, so by the middle third I found myself skimming, until the actual publication details of WW, which again got the 'story' rolling again.
Caveat - this is much LESS about WW and much more about the personal issues of Mr. Marston and his proto-feminist enclave. His personal choices are unsavory, which sadly made the book less 'enjoyable' even while being more psychologically enlightening.

I bought this book for my Kindle Paperwhite, as my Book Group's going to discuss it. Maybe it's OK on the Kindle Fire, but it is impossible on mine! Turning each of the first ten pages was agony! I'm giving up, and ordering the paperback... But feel I should get a refund for the worthless Kindle edition! I think there should be a warning to only order it for the Fire!

First of all, know that while Jill Lepore's book is both literate and understandable, there are too many assumptions here that are presented as if they were true. The overlighting assumption is when Lepore states on page xii that "I've got the history of Wonder Woman." In reality, she does not. No one has it. There are too many secrets involved, the truth of which remains unknown. Though Lepore has done a great amount of research that she then places in a historical and cultural context for readers, she makes no mention of previous researchers. It's as if they didn't exist and as if she is the first to excavate all of this material. She is not the first. More accurately, her book isn't "The Secret History of Wonder Woman", it's much more "The (partial) Secret History of William Moulton Marston, his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston and his or their mistress, Olive Byrne," all of whom lived together and all of whom kept secrets. Another major assumption-as-truth is when Lepore states: "According to one version of the story, Marston had given Holloway a choice. Either Olive Byrne could live with them or he would leave her." Lepore then never goes on to explore or talk about other "versions" of the story and this one becomes the de facto tale for the rest of the book. Why? Lepore also never mentions the possibility that Elizabeth and Olive were lovers. After Marston's death they stayed living together for almost 40 years. Why purposefully ignore this line of inquiry? In the afterword to her book, she talks about getting to see a third set of family papers and discovering that a number of her (minor) speculations in the book turned out to be inaccurate. In a family that kept more secrets than an intelligence service, the list of Lepore's likely inaccurate speculations is much, much longer than she is willing to admit.

This is a scholarly look at the history and origins of the Wonder Woman character created by William Moulton Marston. The book goes quite a bit into Marston's background and the social conditions of the times. I would say that up to page 185 the book is essentially a biography of Marston and his family. There are not that many illustrations and most are black & white snapshots from the Marston family album.

For me to the book gets interesting on page 186 (in 1940) when Marston suggests to DC Comics that they need a female Superman character and in February 1941 he submits the first installment of "Suprema, the Wonder Woman" which was shortly changed to just "Wonder Woman." Pages 190 to 298 cover the history of Wonder Woman roughly to the mid 1970s and updates us along the way about the Marston family.

Pages 299 to 392 are mostly footnotes. Yes, a lot of footnotes.

The most entertaining parts of the book are when they talk directly about the Wonder Woman character and influences or back story that you might not know. There's too much biographical information about Marston and related family members. For comic art fans this is definitely not an art book. There are not that many comic book illustrations and it feels mostly like a text book. There are nuggets here and there that I liked and for that I give it four stars. But this is not really the "Secret History of Wonder Woman" as I would have expected--that's only about 108 pages of the total book. Still if you love this character it's worth reading. For casual fans this is not recommended.

This narrative goes ON and ON and ON - blah blah blah ...
This book told me more than I ever wanted to know about the man who invented Wonder Woman and was his own greatest fan. He lived with several women who supported him and who all did whatever he wanted. He was supposed to be a champion of women's rights - suffrage and equality in the workplace - but he did NOT practice what he preached! What's more, his Wonder Woman episodes were all about bondage and subservience. I read it for a book club and could hardly force myself to finish it.

The title is somewhat misleading. This book is really a biography of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston (1893-1947) and his two wives, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne, a niece of Margaret Sanger who was the founder of Planned Parenthood. All three were strongly influenced by the early suffragists and feminists, especially Emmeline Pankhurst, and the author does a good job on showing those influences, especially feminist utopian fiction, on the early years of Wonder Woman. Armed with three degrees from Harvard, including a Ph.D. in psychology, Marston was the inventor of the first lie detector test, although the version actually used by police departments and government agencies was invented by one of his competitors. He had also written one novel and several screenplays before trying comic books and had been a consultant for Universal Studios when they were starting to produce horror movies. Except for her appearances with the Justice Society, Marston, under the pseudonym of Charles Moulton, wrote all of Wonder Woman’s adventures up until 1944, when he was stricken with polio and had to hire an assistant, and was still writing them up to two days before his death from cancer in 1947. He also hired Harry G. Peter, an illustrator for suffragette publications, to be the first artist to draw Wonder Woman. One of the early criticisms of the stories is that almost all of them featured bondage in one form or another, which was one of Moulton’s pre-occupations. He is also a polyamorist in that he lived with Holloway, Byrne, and sometimes a third woman named Marjorie Wilkes Huntley during the last twenty years of his life and had two children each by first two. His legal wife, Holloway, worked outside the home as an editor and actually supported the family because Marston multiple business ventures failed and he was unable to hold academic appointments for more than a year. Officially the “housekeeper”, Byrne stayed home and raised the children, although she did occasionally write articles for Family Circle. It was an article by Byrne, writing as Olive Richard, that brought Marston to the attention of M.C. Gaines, the first publisher of DC Comics, who hired Marston as a consultant to defend comic books against charges that they celebrated violence. Then in 1941, Marston persuaded Gaines to publish the adventures of a female superhero, who became Wonder Woman. I found the book quite fascinating and highly recommend to anyone interested in the history of either feminism or comic books.

Not being a fan of comic books, I still saw many comic book characters become standard Saturday morning cartoon fodder when I was a kid. My formal introduction to Wonder Woman was courtesy of ABC and it’s campy mid-70s primetime drama featuring a winsome Linda Carter exhibiting all of the super-heroine’s cache of gadgets and powers (I can still envision the primitive special effects that emulated Wonder Woman’s “invisible” plane). What drew me to Jill Lepore’s book more than anything was its title; I knew there must have been some unique background that led to the creation of Wonder Woman and all her powers. Far exceeding what I expected, THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN proved to be an extremely interesting study of early 20th century American social history.

I always imagined that comic book characters were the products of creative minds’ daydreams … a great deal of fantasy. Wonder Woman’s creator, William Moulton Marston was an extremely bright, creative and ambitious man who simply couldn’t cash in on his education and jack-of-all-trades expertise until he started (late in life) to creatively express life experiences and his adulation for the women who spearheaded the suffragist movement in the early 20th century. Lepore’s book is not a simple history of Wonder Woman, but a very deep study of the secretive history of her creator and the strong, independent women who inspired him. To some extent, THE SECRET LIFE OF WONDER WOMAN is more an expose as the secrets of Marston and the delicately crafted façade he created were so secretive, even some of his children weren’t informed who their biological parents were until they were young adults.

What impressed me about the book was Lepore’s dedication to providing a scholarly approach of the subject matter. I never thought the history and inspiration behind a comic strip character could be so complicated … and interesting. The first two-thirds of the book is mostly a biography of Marston’s somewhat fascinating life (he “invented” the lie detector) and it proves critical in deciphering Wonder Woman, her powers and her purpose. Marston’s reverence for the suffragists and their plight serves as the catalyst behind Wonder Woman and reading about his life serves somewhat as an education on the women’s movement itself. Marston’s public life as an educator, filmmaker, author, researcher and inventor provides the perfect cover for his secret personal life that included a long-term polyamorous relationship with two women with whom he fathered children. I found it ironic that the roles within the house seemed to contradict the feminist environment Marston so embraced: one wife (Elizabeth Holloway) worked to support the household, the other wife (Olive Byrne) cared for the children and Marston was given space to pretty much do as he pleased. This secret scandalous lifestyle was deftly managed and only became known to a few (which was a likely cause for Marston being blackballed from having an academic career). Lepore ties much of Marston’s life to Wonder Woman and her story lines. From the bullet-proof bracelets (Olive Byrne wore the bracelets in lieu of a wedding band), her “truth lasso (Marston’s lie detector) to every storyline having Wonder Woman being chained by men (a reference to women having to free themselves). The complexity of Marston’s life and how he managed to express it through Wonder Woman is intriguing. Lepore also delves into the particulars of Wonder Woman’s unique role in the comics, censorship trouble and the challenge presented by the belief that comic books were (at the time) devious and detrimental to society (I can’t imagine how “Two and a Half Men” would have been received in those days).

THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN isn’t an easy read. In fact, much of the difficulty I had involved Marston/Holloway/Byrne’s efforts to hide their family by using fictitious and combinations of their own names for the children … it took me a while to keep track of who-was-who. Lepore cites over 70 pages of sources, so the entire book is extremely detailed. In addition to an appendix that lists the titles and release dates of Wonder Woman comics, the book is peppered throughout with photos and numerous excerpts of Wonder Woman strips. Overall, THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN is an effective and well-executed presentation. I honestly didn’t anticipate such a rich history lesson from a book about Wonder Woman, but that’s what I ended up getting.

The book has great promise in starts out explaining the purpose of wonder woman; that is the purpose that Marston had in mind when creating wonder woman.

Each chapter gives a different view of Marston and his purpose. Settled them doesn't stray from the biography of William Moulton Marston to give any pure wonder woman fax.

The book may be of use to people that want to know Marston's family history back to 1066, however it is a little dry and misleading for anybody wanting to know "The Secret History of Wonder Woman."

The book itself does have a few snippets from wonder woman scripts. However it never completes the scripts as they are just used for quick samples. There is a small section of color plates which again is a conglomerate of front pages from wonder woman comics.

I must give the author (Jill Lepore) credit for having an exceptional amount of notes and details so you will not be saying "suffering Sappho."

Who could guess that the creation of Wonder Woman would be even more outlandish and entertaining then she is. From a gothic castle with a suicidle heir, to Ivy Leage suffregetes, to groundbreaking inventions, polyamourous female supremacists, naughty professors, and wierd science... It's hard to imagine a story more fascinating than this one. Perhaps if all men had three wives who adored them, financially supported them, and generally worshiped them belief in female supremacy would be more common. That's just part of the bizzare backstory of professor Marston, the man who created Wonder Woman. One of his wives even wrote a column in a major woman's magazine where she essentially just talked about what a genius he was! I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Even if you have zero interest in Wonder Woman, it's hard to imagine someone not being immensely entertained by this book. On the downside, there are a few leaps of logic leading to some statements in the book that are unlikely to be true (the author presents very dubious evidence that Wonder Woman's creator was in a sex cult). However, the true strangeness in the book will outweigh the few instances of scandalmongering. There's enough real scandal to entertain even the most jaded of readers.

In December 2016, a petition signed by 45,000 (!?!) ignoramuses effortlessly and efficiently bullied the hapless United Nations into abandoning their plans to use Wonder Woman as a figurehead for women’s rights. Because Wonder Woman’s appearance and character didn’t suit their narrow definition of what all women should be, a wonderful honor and opportunity was lost.

The searing and shaming defence that the U.N. (and DC for that matter) should have mounted was made by Wonder Woman comics fan and artist Nicola Scott, in The Guardian of all places. “Unfortunately, it seems that all Wonder Woman’s history, her place in cultural progress, has been ignored” wrote Scott (the article’s online and worth a read). “The petition stated that Wonder Woman’s current image, referring in particular to her outfit and appearance, was inappropriate, and the empowerment role should be held by a real woman. Absolutely, real life women should hold official representation roles, especially for such a loaded global goal, but an ‘honorary’ ambassador, unlike a goodwill ambassador, is traditionally created for fictional characters. Fictional characters have the ability to cross borders and boundaries that real people can’t. Their accessibility and interest to children help spread important goals to younger generations. The recent petition reduced her to pretty lady in a bathing suit, stripped her of agency. Just another woman who’s lost her job”.

In other words, no fictional character could have been more appropriate, but these silly fools knew nothing of Wonder Woman’s origins, purpose, history, philosophy, or even that she had been adopted as a feminist icon by Gloria Steinem herself in the 1970s. This was something any half-educated comics fan could have told them or the U.N., had they cared to investigate instead of in the first case, airing their knee-jerk inhibitions, and in the second, capitulating to pushy pressure groups who no more represent real women than Batman represents bats. Yes, these were not misogynist, Trump-like cavemen who de-powered comics’ foremost female super-hero, but supposed ‘feminists’. 45,000 copies of this book might have come in very useful at that time, plus a few more for the complicit cowards of the U.N. who caved in so quickly. Good to know these stoic, resolute, and steadfast individuals are in charge of something as significant as world peace, ain’t it?

So what is Wonder Woman’s unfortunately all-too-secret history? Well, in truth, despite the 45,000 signatures, it’s not actually that secret. There have been stories floating about in comic book circles since the 1970s about the "secret life” of the creator of Wonder Woman—about the menage-a-trois and the spanking and the bondage, and the creation of the dubious and discredited “lie detector” (a device which, ironically, I first found out about in a 1960s Superman comic). What Jane Lepoor has done here is the hard graft, the actual research, and it’s always interesting to get a book that’s assembled all the half-known facts, whispers, and anecdotes, checked them all out, and put them into a readable and chronological format (much like Gerard Jones’ gripping Men of Tomorrow about the beginnings of the American super-hero comics themselves). Lepoor paints a fascinating picture of William Moulton Marston, the strip’s charismatic and controversial con-man of a creator, part saint, part opportunist, part weirdo, all self-interest. That a character who has become a role model for young girls the world over should have begun life as an expression of the least empowering of (and not exclusively male) sex fantasies is an irony far too complex for the 45,000.

But she doesn’t stop there, for this book is also about that often justifiably, sometimes unfairly, much-maligned subject feminism, like Marston himself, a topic of absurd contradictions. For Wonder Woman has strong connections with the life of Margaret Sanger, a pioneering suffragette campaigner and her partner Olive (note that in Sanger’s day, it was the university that sought to prevent people with alternative views from speaking, now it’s the students!). It’s one of the great tragedies of the 20th century that the suffrage movement (votes for women, the right to contraception, the right to a career, the right to own property and live alone, for chrissakes) and the subsequent equal rights agenda that followed should have been hijacked by man-haters and prudes who have managed to alienate and irritate the vast majority of men and women who want kids, careers, and families. Most people do not subscribe to the victim/blame agenda or peculiar prejudices of the bigoted, uptight oddballs who find the beauty of the female form so offensive. If Jane Lepoor’s publishers ever print a revised edition, this sorry episode will make an extraordinarily poignant footnote.

If you choose sides by gender, or prefer a battle of the sexes to peace and pleasure, then LePoor’s well-told tale will be so full of the contradictions and complications of the real world it will be a tough slog. For everyone else, it’s a wonderful story of the strengths and weaknesses of the imperfect men and women who between them created a wonder woman to empower women (and has done) who was so perfect she ended up offending those women who had no belief in themselves two generations later in 2016. I couldn’t put it down.

Jill Lenore is fine cultural historian who ranges widely in American History often exploring neglected areas and cultural topics. She is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. This book started out as a New Yorker essay.

I read the original New Yorker article when it came out. Although I am awarding this book 4 stars for the quality of the research and writing I found it a disappointment. It is a good article expanded into a padded book. There is far too much minutia about Marston’s life progression that bogs down the text. I frequently found myself skimming and putting the book aside out of tedium before picking it up to plow on.

The virtue of the book is the fine job Lepore does teasing out how much Wonder Woman owed to the Progressive Era women’s movement and Marston’s checkered efforts to perfect his lie detector. I had not realized that his was a commercial dead end. Nor had I appreciated how central the creation of Ms Magazine was to the revival of Wonder Woman which by 1972 DC Comics had debased behind any semblance of the character Marston created. The many illustrations within the chapters and the color insert are interesting but chunks of verbatim text used as captions are annoying when reencounter in the text.

From the perspective of my law school days I found the backstory of Frye vs. United States and the unethical but unsurprising actions of James Frye’s legal team very interesting. Frye decided in 1922 remains a leading case on the parameters for admitting scientific evidence in court. I was unaware that Marston's efforts to promote his lie detector was central to the defense strategy at the trial and appellate levels to the detriment of the unwitting client James Frye who spent 18 years in prison. It was an unexpected bonus. So too was Marston's counterproductive effort to get a puff out of J. Edgar Hoover.

Lepore could have done more to explore the racism associated with the 1940s Wonder Woman which is briefly touched on (pp 216-17). I also wondered how much, if at all, Marston financially benefited from creating Wonder Woman. I’m thinking here of the creator of Superman who sold their rights for a pittance and spent years fighting for compensation. Marston seems to have been savvy enough to have avoided that trap but it would be good to know.

-Fascinating background of the story behind the creation of Wonder Woman. The author goes beyond the actual 1941 introduction, and into the early 1900's with a look into the women's suffrage movement. Although we usually are familiar with Susan Anthony, there were many other women who fought hard for women to be the equal of men, not just for voting rights, but for treatment in society.
-We trace the lives of people like Margaret Sanger and Ethyl Byrne, sisters who allowed themselves to be arrested and who made so many sacrifices to achieve their goal. The creator of Wonder Woman, William Marston, also was a very interesting person, who bounced from one thing to another and seemed destined for repeated failure, but was highly influenced by the women around him.
-Through the revelation of William Marston's life and the lives of the women that influenced him, we find the source of much of what later became a part of Wonder Woman. The original Wonder Woman character was a free spirit who refused to be relegated to the status of second class citizen, which is what women still were in that time. Marston imbued her with a strong spirit, but he always straddled the line of what was acceptable and what was not. Despite great opposition, he never gave up on the traits that he wanted Wonder Woman to portray.
-Marston himself had many sides to him. He was a graduate of Harvard Law. But in law, he was mediocre. At that same time that he opened up a law firm, he opened several businesses, which all failed. He became a professor in the new field of psychology, which held great interest for him because he was the first person that came up with a lie detector machine, although he didn't profit from it. Though he married, he believed in free love. His wife, Elizabeth Holloway, had to agree to not only accept a mistress, Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger, but Olive lived with them and also had children from Marston who were raised in the same house.
-Wonder Woman is actually a mixture of attributes of several woman of that time. Women like Margaret Sanger, who would not acquiesce to the men around her who would try to silence her; his wife, who was outspoken as well, and refused to accept the role that society laid out for women; his mistress, Olive Byrne, whose habit of wearing cuffs on her arms was the source of Wonder Woman's bracelets.
-This is a great illumination on a time in history which opened up emancipation of women, and is something that is still evolving even today. It is a must read for anyone interested in a history of the issue in how to determine the role of men and women in society.

This looked so intriguing that I picked it up, and am not sure I'm happy I did. This was pretty depressing at several levels. The history turns out to be that Wonder Woman was created by an brilliant egotistical psychology professor (who invented the first "lie detector" based on a person's blood pressure) who believed in women's rights, and fell in love with two different ambitious, feminist college graduates (both feminists, suffragettes, and birth control advocates), married one, and had two children by the other, two kids who always believed their father had died. In the meantime, his wife got to continue her career and his mistress lived with the family and raised the kids! (egotistical professor told his wife if she didn't allow this he would divorce her). While wife and mistress apparently were good friends and even lived together after hubby died, I don't understand why two educated, intelligent women put up with this rubbish and let this twit direct their lives. (Actually three, as another woman named Marjorie Huntley lived in the Marston home as well.)

William Marston and his ladies: wife Elizabeth Holloway and mistress Olive Byrne (whose aunt was Margaret Sanger) and Huntley raised the eventual four kids on an estate named Cherry Orchard, where Marston went from university professor to occasional consultant due to his unconventional beliefs (and at that point no one knew about their living arrangements) to pretty much being supported by his wife and the flattering articles Olive did about him for "Family Circle." His kids say he was a good father except for occasional bad temper that never strayed into physical abuse. He created Wonder Woman to be on an equal standing with men, but in her stories she was usually confined to chains she was required to break to triumph (Marston always said these were symbolic chains, yet he apparently got a great kick out of describing them).

So while Wonder Woman has always been a feminist symbol, the three women closest to their creator were pretty much held in thrall by this guy. Fascinating psychologically, but really creepy and annoying to read about. Did enjoy the historical perspective of the suffragettes, of young female college students trying to make it in a man's world, and of the birth control movement, but the people involved were not people I would have wanted to know.

I need to start with a disclaimer, as so many other reviewers have done: if you are a hardcore comics enthusiast looking for a straightforward history of the publication of Wonder Woman, this is not the book for you. However, if you are a reader interested in 20th century feminism, the origins of American psychology, and the biography of an "interesting" American character, this is a book designed just for you.

Jill Lepore's copious research is evident. She dug into archives, personal collections, forgotten publications and other sources to bring together the unknown and the obscure story of William Moulton Marston and his extended family. I enjoyed Lepore's detours into biographical accounts of Emmeline Pankhurst and Margaret Sanger; these provided social context and insight into Marston's influences. I didn't care so much for Lepore's writing style and her preference for short declarative sentences.

The illustrations are well chosen and I appreciated finding out more about editor Sheldon Mayer (whose comic Sugar and Spike I adore) and artist William Peter. The Wonder Woman comics I have read have been mainly from the 1970's (the "New Wonder Woman" sans traditional costume), the 1980's (the George Perez reboot) and various recent versions. Lepore's book has intrigued me and I plan to dig out my unread DC Archives editions of the original Wonder Woman stories. The background information provided by Lepore will make reading these classic stories much more interesting.

Highly recommend this story of the remarkable William Marston, who invented the lie detector and Wonder Woman. He gave WW (secretly) the philosophy of Margaret Sanger and the character of his wife. He was a famous psychologist (three Harvard degrees) who could not keep a job, and was supported by his wife, Elizabeth Holloway, a successful editor and executive. He was connected to Sanger through her niece, Olive, one of three women he lived with, two of whom each bore two of his children. The three women and four children continued to live happily together after Marston died, keeping secret that he was the father of Olive's children. Marston and his friends were supporters of feminism from college days in the early 1900s.

Lepore has done fantastic research in archives, family papers, interviews to uncover more than one terrific secret history. The connections she reveals among disparate threads of 20th century social history are fascinating. She gives a view of the women's movement and birth control movement from Pankhurst and Sanger to Gloria Steinem. The first issue of Steinem's new magazine, Ms, featured WW on the cover, and Steinem was intrigued with the feminism of the 1940s WW (WW was poorly written after Marston died in 1947). Elizabeth Holloway Marston, age 80, marched to the offices of Ms magazine to pledge her full support.

There is a good discussion of the controversy whether comic books were harmful. There is a good discussion of the controversy over bondage in Marston's WW stories. When Steinem reprinted some WW stories she rejected those with bondage. Interesting discussion of Marston's Boston aunt and her Age of Aquarius sex cult, of which Marston's household were members. The book is heavily illustrated with WW drawings and family pictures.

Suffering Sappho! Somewhere in my deprived childhood, I missed out on the superhero comic book phase and somehow passed from Donald Duck to the classics where, in fact, Sappho became my favorite poet. So, I picked up Jill Lepore’s book on a lark, recently having become interested in the significance of popular culture, In this case of comic books, for interculturalists. It turned out to be the best thing I’ve read so far this year. It’s basically history, the story of William Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman and the continuation and mutations of this comic book character after the death of her originator. All of this is set in the ongoing saga of the women’s movement, it’s fluctuations, and the real life “wonder women” in the struggle for women’s rights.

It is a tour de force for Lepore, who seems to have crammed what looks like a lifetime of intensely patient research into a single volume that, nonetheless, is hard to put down because it reads like a novel. It provides a day-to-day look into Marston’s life as a student, psychologist, would-be inventor, lover and sire of children, and betimes charlatan, set into the background of feminist aspirations with significant flashbacks into important historical moments and characters in the feminist struggle. Lepore pulls no punches when looking at the politics, often rather nasty, from national level down to that of the Harvard administration, the publishing industry and within the women’s movement. The book is thus an antidote to any excessive idealism we might have nurtured about those institutions.

This “secret history”, is full of secrets, realities obfuscated deliberately by the actors, as well as those that the entire book opens to the reader, the often hidden sources of the dynamics found in the tales of Wonder Woman, her secret history. This reader was struck by the frequent dissonance between real-life, particularly the secret family life of Marston, the struggle to keep up appearances, and his feminist advocacy, but this is probably also due in part to hindsight which projects today’s gender focus on to the past.

Most interesting to me as an interculturalist were the various cultural struggles that occurred between the forces of the time regarding freedom of speech, norms of decency, and particularly the war of the sexes. Lepore’s narrative bespeaks volumes about the cultural values systems of the protagonists in their attempts to promote them. For me, this reading confirmed my hunch in picking up the book, that the dynamics of popular culture and art, literature, and artifacts would open doors to the perception of cultural values at work and often provide insights into the continuity of these values from the past into the present. Artifacts reflect, express, inculcate, modify and motivate our identity narratives all the more effectively when delivered as not-so-secret “secrets” scantily clothed in art, as the curvaceous figure of Wonder Woman herself suggests.

This book was picked as the Summer Reading selection for my University so I decided to give it a shot.

What an interesting and enlightening read! Lepore chronicles the strange polygamous life of Wonder Woman's creator, the rise of and evolution of 20th century feminism and its leaders, and the politics of censorship surrounding the hit comic book character. She uses the thread of Wonder Woman to tell the compelling story of the Marston family, but also of a larger truth surrounding the early origins of American feminism.

Early in the book it felt overly wrought with detail and disorganized, but by the halfway point everything had come together in a way so I could see what the point of all of her different threads and details meant and how it all related back to Wonder Woman. At the end of the book, Lepore discusses how feminism is often thought of in disconnected waves but it's actually all related over time with some eras more active in feminist dialogue than others. As a feminist, I feel like I learned a lot from this book about the history of a movement that is so important to me and also lots about early comic book history which is something that is important to me as a nerd.

If you can slog through some of the early stuff, this is definitely worth the read!!

I have some mixed feelings about this book. I gave it a high rating because it's obviously well researched and I do love the feminist history the book opens with.

However I just find the whole story incredibly weird. From Marston's behavior to his notoriety to the way he treated women and the fact that he was so well promoted by the women in his life. I think having now seen the Harvard area and being able to make those connections (including the castle) have made it interesting, but it was less about Wonder Woman and more about Marston, which I guess I should have expected.

The feminist history is fascinating, especially the context of the time of the first feminist movement around birth control. But the book is also repetitive, sometimes mentioning facts like where the concept of Wonder Woman's bracelet came from, and it's repeated again, word for word, in another section. It gives a lot of history to Wonder Woman as a character, but I was hoping to find out more about her transition from 1920's feminist icon to modern DC character. This is not that story. And I can see why a lot if this is "secret" history.

If you're looking for stories about Wonder Woman this isn't it, but if you want to know about the origin of the character it's a very thorough presentation.

I wanted more Wonder Woman!
This was an interesting and informative read about the creator of Wonder Woman and his whole life story and odd way of living at the time. I enjoyed the backdrop to how she was created and by the people who really influenced her characters beginnings. I have always loved Wonder Woman but as only 26 I didn't know her beginnings and it was really awesome to see illustrations from the first comics ever published. It was interesting to read about Marston's and his wife and lover respectively and how they lived together which you still don't see much of and is almost considered taboo still. I wouldn't choose to live that way but to each their own. I guess it wasn't that interesting to me as this has been out awhile but I did over all enjoy it.

Who knew?

Who knew that Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist and lawyer, who lived an unconventional life with his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and his former grad-student, Olive Byrne? Who knew that the character of Diana Prince and her homeland of Paradise Island was a direct result of suffragism, early feminism and the creation of lie detectors?

Author Jill Lepore delves into this complex history to weave together the variety of characters whose lives directly inspired Wonder Woman. As much as William Moulton Marston wants to present the notion that that Wonder Woman sprung from his forehead like he was Zeus, there were many more people involved in developing the atmosphere – and not to mention in supporting the environment in which Marston worked – out of which the superhero evolved.

Lepore initially focuses on Marston’s work on the lie detector – which manifests itself in the comics as Wonder Woman’s golden lasso that forces people to tell the truth. In this opening section, Lepore’s narrative skills are a bit shaky. Episodes appear fragmented, facts are tossed in as though everything has relevance. But once she moves into the early history of the suffragettes, the author takes off, and the work unfolds in fascinating detail.

I kept being shocked by Marston’s charismatic egoism – he sounds charming and infuriating. He comes across as a grandiose personality that needs constant affirmation of his somewhat questionable skills. There’s no doubt that he had the best intentions in his work, but he sounds more like a smarmy salesperson than a professional academic.

What is most fascinating about Lepore’s book is how Margaret Sanger and other influential feminists deliberately kept themselves one step removed from Wonder Woman, as though the comic book character would taint their ferocious fight for equality. Even into the 1960s and 70s, Wonder Woman remains a questionable icon to Gloria Steinem. What does it mean to have this powerful superhero as a symbol of equality when women question the efficacy of her use?

Lepore’s book has less to do with the history of comic books and more the social mileau out of which Wonder Woman grew. It’s a fascinating read, once she gets going on the history of feminism.

I was disappointed in this book. It should, first of all, have been called "The Secret History of William Moulton Marston" (the creator of Wonder Woman) since the book really spends most of its time talking about him and his very strange lifestyle. Second, the book (written by a historian) reads like a research paper in history, crammed with facts and tons of footnotes. People who want to read about the comic book character and her development over the years will find bits and pieces of this, but unfortunately it is buried beneath a ton of historical stuff on the women's rights movements and related issues (women's right to vote, abortion, etc.). I also think Lepore could have done a better job of tightening up the manuscript; it seems that she threw everything she knew about the subject into the mix, causing a considerable amount of tedium along the way. I admire the author's skills as a historian but the book falls short as entertainment.

Jill Lepore does a wonderful job of exploring the backstory of not only the most popular female comic book character in history, but also the man who created her. While most people are drawn to understanding William Moulton Marston because he was the creator of Wonder Woman, I was interested in a different aspect of his legacy. Given that I have spent my career teaching people about the DISC styles, I was fascinated by Lepore's discussion of Marston's book, The Emotions of Normal People, in which he introduced the DISC model.

Based on Marston's work, millions of individuals have taken DISC assessments and gone through DISC training programs. But most people do not know that the four styles are tied to the bondage relationship of Dominance and Submission, a subject that Marston was intimately interested in exploring. Note the D and the S in the DISC personality model stand for Dominance and Submission. Marston used the word Inducement for the I style, which as a lawyer, he understood meant "to enter into a binding contract." Compliance, the C style, refers to an agreement to comply with a contract. So, the DISC model that is used every day in companies around the world is based on the agreement within a bondage relationship to comply with the act of Dominance and Submission. Fascinating!

The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between feminism, the lie detector, the DISC styles, and of course, Wonder Woman.

When I see a title like "The Secret History of Wonder Woman" my mind is pulled into two directions -- I'm going to learn about the author OR I'm going to learn about the history of the character over the decades. It is difficult to do the second without the first but in Jill Lepore's investigation we learn far more about the creator, William Moulton Marston and the world he lived in than the history of Wonder Woman the character.

If you want to learn about early 20th century America, this is a great book. Lepore grounds Marston's life in his childhood and the childhoods of the women in his life, women who pushed and in many ways helped create Wonder Woman, too. Much of what you will learn about Marston may shock you but those "good old days" are not the ideals pushed upon us in popular culture.

If you want to learn about the develop of psychology and feminism in America, this is a very good book. Lepore explores the various figures, men and women, who interconnected with Marston either directly or indirectly through their work. She sees in the development of psychology Marston's earliest interest in recurring themes in Wonder Woman such as truth and gender roles. Feminism also hugely impacted his life yet I found it difficult to call him a feminist when he seemed to embrace a division between men and women that was not proved by his science only filtered through it. Likewise at first glance his life might seem anti-feminist but then you realize that every adult in his world chose to be there in a variety of roles, supporting the core idea of feminism that each person should be able to chose.

If you want to learn about the character Wonder Woman then this leaves decades barren. The Wonder Woman of today is not just a product of Marston or his world but a creation seven decades in the making. We leave her not only after Marston's death (1947) and pick her up again very briefly in the early 1970s. I found a dearth of focus on the comics themselves to be very disappointing -- the number of reprinted strips is small compared to the number of pages in the book. Furthermore while Marston's vision may have been lost in the 1950s and 1960s versions of Wonder Woman those decades should not be ignored because they surely helped influence comic readers during those years and the revision of the character in the 1970s.

Ultimately I felt this was more a history of the early 20th century and one man (Marston) versus the history of Wonder Woman.

This book goes into great depth with new discoveries about the life of William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman. Early on, Lepore lays out her premise clearly. She traces Superman’s roots to science fiction, Batman to the hard-boiled detective, and Wonder Woman to “the feminist utopia and to the struggle for women’s rights.” But this book isn’t about the superhero (although I learned bits about her I didn’t know, including the significance of the chain imagery, reflecting real-life suffragette demonstrations) as much as it is about the odd man who dreamed her up.

In The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Jill Lepore has written a very readable exploration of the life of Marston. She focuses on the feminist influences, from his equally well-educated wife (who may have done some of the work credited to him and kept money coming into the family) to the third party in their multi-person relationship, Olive Byrne. Olive was the daughter of a sister of Margaret Sanger. Olive’s mother nearly died after a hunger strike during her imprisonment for violating the law against telling people about methods of birth control. (A law that strikes the modern reader as particularly stupid.)

Now, I knew some of the “shocking” items being used to promote this book, such as Marston’s unique family setup and his invention of the lie detector, but even the elements I was familiar with, I learned a lot more details about. (Like Marston’s immense reported success rate with his early detector trials, until it failed miserably.) I had never thought about what it would have been like to have been one of the women in his life, and I’m embarrassed that that never occurred to me before. Understanding more about the women who inspired him makes Wonder Woman — and the many similarities — more interesting.

Marston’s own career was notably checkered, with one interesting chapter going into the legal cases that led to the lie detector being ruled inadmissible as evidence and the charges of fraud against Marston at the time, a situation that didn’t help his reputation. I hadn’t realized how badly his career went, or the variety of rumors that swirled around him, due in part to his theories about domination and submission. I didn’t know he made a stab at working in Hollywood, writing for the movies, or how much of a self-promoter he became when someone else patented a polygraph machine.

I’m also glad to see many photos of these people included. Too many books of this nature focus on text, but the images remind the reader of how long ago some of this took place (with Wonder Woman debuting in 1941). Lepore has apparently done a huge amount of research through Marston’s private papers. And she’s kept it all very entertaining. Although clocking in at over 400 pages, I dove into the book gladly and kept wanting more.

The third section of the book (after one on Marston’s early life and one on his family) comes to Wonder Woman, how she was created and how successful she became. The bits people have sniggered about for years — the skimpy outfit, the frequent bondage — are clearly addressed, with details that will inform even the most knowledgeable fan or historian. There’s a bit of information on artist Harry G. Peter as well as Joye E. Hummel, an early ghostwriter on the character.

After Marston’s death, the character and the industry decline, particularly in the face of attacks by Dr. Wertham, who “found the feminism in Wonder Woman repulsive”. Lepore points out that he also had a professional rivalry with Dr. Lauretta Bender, a child psychiatrist who was one of the advisors on Wonder Woman and a supporter of comic books as good coping methods for children. An epilogue to the book covers the use of Wonder Woman on the cover of the first issue of Ms. magazine and gives a brief overview of what happened to both the character and feminism in the 1970s.

The book ends with an index of the comics that Wonder Woman appeared in while still under the control of her creator and some information on how to read them. I’ll definitely be diving into those shortly, with new insight into the best-known superhero woman. (The publisher provided a digital review copy.) (Review originally posted at ComicsWorthReading.com.)

I have no high-brow literary disdain for comic books. I read my share of comic books when I was a kid but I was never a serious fan. When it comes to Wonder Woman, for example, I never read the comic. My entire knowledge of the character came from the Superfriends cartoon of the 1970’s and the TV show starring Lynda Carter. Because of this, I didn’t really have much interest in reading this book. However, I kept hearing interesting things about it so I picked it up and started reading. It turned out to be a really unexpected pleasure.

In point of fact, this book is more the biography of William Moulton Marston than anything else. Marston was the creator of Wonder Woman and wrote most of the early scripts for the comic. And yet, he only came to this after a long descending spiral of an academic career. He was an Ivy-league educated psychologist who invented an early model of the lie detector test. He hoped this invention would be his claim to fame but its failure to be recognized as valid evidence by the courts ruined this avenue to success. Along the way, he tried his hand as a university professor but quickly fell down the ladder to less and less prestigious positions.

Hampering his path to fame and fortune was likely his outspoken support of equal rights for women as well as his unorthodox home life. Though only legally married to one woman with whom he had children, he also had children with another woman who lived with them and carried on a relationship with another woman who often shared the house as well. This practical polygamy seemed to be generally happy for those involved but did not play well in the world at large.

In point of fact, for all his being a mouthpiece for women’s rights, his private behavior often seemed at odds with his professed beliefs. The women he managed to bring into his household were not fools, being highly educated themselves and long linked to the struggle for equal rights—the connection of this story to that of the more famous Margaret Sanger is absolutely fascinating—but they often seemed to allow Marston to take credit for their intellectual work. Then there are the hints at a kinkier sexual behavior beyond the simple fact of having multiple children by multiple “wives” living together in some sort of harmony.

And yet, the swaths of his life that Marston lifted and placed directly in the pages of Wonder Woman are incredible. From the chunky bracelets worn by Olive Byrne (one of the women with whom he shared a home) that became Wonder Woman’s bracelets to the bondage suffered by women in nearly every issue of the comic to the university milieu he created for many of the stories, Marston used his life, beliefs and experiences as a blueprint for Wonder Woman. In getting to know Marston, we get to know the basis of Wonder Woman.

It may seem difficult to believe how closely Marston guided the development of Wonder Woman but it only takes observing the dramatic change in the character upon Marston’s death that offer that last bit of proof. She almost immediately becomes weaker, subservient and male-dominated, leading to a loss in popularity for the character. Still, the spirit of the character survived. And, whatever his weaknesses might have been, we have to thank him for that spirit.

Here's the secret of The Secret History of Wonder Woman: It's not about Wonder Woman at all. Instead it's about William Marston - mostly failed psychologist, inventor of the lie detector test, and possible BDSM fan - who created Wonder Woman after he ran out of other career options.

And that, sadly, is exactly what's wrong with Lepore's otherwise fascinating tale of the origins of one of the world's best-known superheroes: this isn't a story about Marston. It's about the many, many strong women who surrounded him, and who inspired his work...when he wasn't borrowing or co-opting theirs. Weirdly, the author seems to not understand she's picked the least interesting person in the book to hang her narrative on - not even toward the end when Marston is literally unable to leave his bed and his wonder women go on running his world (and business) without him for months.

There are other problems with this History. For one, it needs a good editing, as it's painfully clear that it was developed as a series of chapters rather than an entire book: simple points are endlessly and needlessly repeated, naming conventions change willy-nilly, and main players are reintroduced as if you hadn't spent the last two hundred pages hearing about their intimate domestic details.

Which brings us to another issue: namely, for all the kinky-sex hype surrounding this title, there's very little factual basis for all the BDSM claims. I would never deny that Wonder Woman spends a lot of time tied up, or that it might be suggestive, but if you're telling me that's a definite indicator of Marston's sexual proclivities, then you need to establish that she spends more time tied up than a) other female characters in comics of the time, b) other female superheroes of any time, or c) other superheroes in general. Having finished the book, I was left with the very strong impression that someone at Knopf decided that the best way to sell this thing was to slap it with the Christian Grey Seal of Approval.

But for all its stylistic faults and overstated marketing ploys, The Secret History remains a good read. It's just that one can't help but think with a little more editing and a different focus, it could have been Wonderful.

Sweet Hera, I think The Secret History of Wonder Woman might just be one of, if not the, most fascinating 20th century-based non-fiction books I have ever read. Especially as a woman conflicted about her own feelings toward feminism.

I can't begin to do it justice other than to say it proves irrevocably that truth is so much more interesting than fiction and that things we adore very rarely have the origin story we think they do. (Outside of the hardcore fan boys or little sister's thereof, how many of you knew the creator of WW also invented the lie detector and was a polygamist?)

The book focuses largely on the unknown role WW played in the Suffrage movement, and First Wave Feminism (with serendipitous occurrences no one could make up) and vice versa; but also the complexity of how she eventually helped to "plateau" the movement.

It's appropriate to read this during the era of Caitlin Jenner as when exploring the contradictions inherit in the medium of comic books as we do today, it echoes the importance of remembering that while she's undoubtedly brave and courageous, Caitlin is not representative of the entire trans community anymore than Laverne Cox is.

And if you like audiobooks, this one is a winner, as author Jill Lepore has a decidedly appropriate enthusiasm and cadence for the subject matter.

Two Thumbs Up: Fine Holiday Fun.

Harvard American history professor and writer Jill Lepore traces the life of William Moulton Marston – psychologist, lawyer, inventor of the lie detector, screen writer, bondage aficionado, feminist, secret polygamist, and creator of Wonder Woman. The intersection of Marston’s life and the lives of his family with key players of the early 20th century suffragette movement, the ways they implemented the free thinking of their time into their family life and Marston’s professional life allow Lepore to chart a fascinating story of popular culture. She illuminates how Marston, despite his advocacy of the natural superiority of women, manages to take advantage of the women in his polygamous family, living off their labor, leaving him free to pursue his often crackpot dreams and goof ball schemes. Lepore balances Marston’s less than noble behavior, often in contradiction of his professed beliefs, with his immense charm and his love for his unconventional family. Lepore brilliantly traces how Wonder Woman manifests characteristics of well-known suffragettes and promotes feminist themes wrapped in aspects of the women in Marston’s life. She exposes many of the chinks in Marston’s views with humor and appreciation. In the process Lepore shines light on the changing roles of women and the social movements their plight fueled from the dawn of the 20th century to its conclusion. A fascinating and well told story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Many reviewers mention it was long and primarily a Marston biography. I don't know why this is a surprise. It is clear from the title and the back cover that the book is about Wonder Woman's creator. I suppose people wanted to know about Wonder Woman herself, rather than the making of...

For those who are interested in the history, it's important to realize that the whole point of history and biography is to understand the minor details and the series of events that transpired. So for those who are interested in this book, you need to have the gumption to get through it!

I will admit that it takes about 150+ pages until you get to the actual creation of Wonder Woman, but I understood why Lepore chose to spend the time painting a picture of the creator. She wants the reader to sympathize with the creator, to see all his failed enterprises prior to WW like the lie detector. By the time he has success, with WW, the reader is cheering him on! It's also necessary to understand why the story behind Wonder Woman was kept a secret for so long, and to understand the series of events going on in society over decades that led to the inspiration behind Wonder Woman.

It also brings up a lot of great themes around social norms, the women's rights movements, war time politics, etc.

Okay, so everything I knew about wonder woman I learned on TV. I used to watch it loyally, but never read the comics. About 10 years ago I was talking about WW to a friend heavily into comics, and he mentioned the "bracelets of submission." I thought they just stopped bullets.

Reading The secret history of WW and about the creator, his wife, his family, was a real eye opener. The book is well written, following time lines in a way that makes sense, and makes Marston, and his wife, Holloway come alive, his home life, raised by his Mother and aunts, shows his strong empathy for women, and yet odd juxtapositions. In one comic story arc Diane Prince is confused with Diane White, a woman with a pretty abusive husband who chains her to the stove, literally, to keep her from getting a job. After it's all figured out and Prince and Whit trade places back, WW says to whitie, I envy you your being a wife and mother. HUH?

Okay, anyway, the book is very well researched but it's not dry, the people come alive and the suffragette and feminist movement, not the same thing, which was well explained clearly, is shown to have influenced Marston, his wife, family, and WW.

Fascinating read, even if the only thing you know about WW is watching Lynda Carter run around in a bustier and thigh high boots.

I read this book for my local library book club. I tried to be open-minded about it from the start because it's not something I would generally pick up and read. I feel that the author, Jill Lepore, definitely did a wonderful job researching the material, but did she have to include so much excruciating detail, dates, history, quotes, people involved? At certain times, I felt that the story didn't flow easily as the author tended to go back in time quite often, adding even more information.

Otherwise, I found the history of the family dynamics and how it intertwined with the making of Wonder Woman fascinating, especially for its time in the early 1900s, but all the added chatter was unnecessary and painful to read and follow. I actually needed to keep a record of the people and dates involved as I was reading.

Overall, I enjoyed learning about how Wonder Woman came about, since I never watched it on TV or read about it. I also found it fascinating how WW reflected the women's movement and the beginning of feminism. Interesting read if you can tolerate the detail.

Long before 50 Shades of Gray was written, bondage was the main theme of a comic book, Wonder Woman, written by prominent Harvard-educated psychologist, William Moulton Marston, who was also a polygamist. Marston is little known for a well known device: polygraph--lie detector. The women in Marston life became the inspiration for the character: Wonder Woman. There are numerous scholarly stories of how 'birth control' was discovered during and around the life of Marston that actually empowered women to control their destiny by choosing to have a child or not. While he was married, he had another live-in woman with whom Marston had child with. Marston had children with other women, too. No wonder he invented a machine that checked if someone was lying or not...to him.

This is actually a history of some of the major social movements in the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. It delves into, via the life of William Moulton Marston, the women's rights movement, the development of psychology / psychiatry, the controversy over birth control, and the free-love movement. Marston was the creator of Wonder Woman in 1941 and the lie detector in 1912-13 (he failed to patent it--he was terrible with practical matters). He was obsessed with determining the nature of emotions and how they differed between women and men, and among the races (unfortunately, he was influenced by the racism of the time).

He believed that women were the more advanced and stronger gender and should rule the world. A rule of women would eliminate war, hunger, poverty, etc., because they were more nurturing, conscientious, and had great moral strength. He developed Wonder Woman as the torch bearer of his philosophy. She was strong within herself, did not need a man to make her a whole person, and fought continuously to break the bonds that imprisoned women. And while all of this sounds right to most modern women, when one looks at Marston's life, one sees a man of contradictions. While professing that women should be free of the social bonds that limited their growth and development, he insisted his wife take his name, let his mistress (and other women) live with them, and live his life as he saw fit. Luckily his wife found a way to adapt to this lifestyle and accomplish her professional goals, but his mistress never escaped his Svengalian influence, resulting in a very unusual "family" situation. Also, for someone who wanted women to be free, he insisted that Wonder Woman always be bound in chains, ropes, etc. in each comic. Of course, she escapes the bonds, but there is more than a little hint of sexual bondage in the comics (not to mention lesbianism). This garnered repeated complaints from a number psychologists, lawmakers, and various pundits.

The book reveals the complex history of a society undergoing deep structural changes and how these changes affected the life of Marston and those who drifted into his orbit. There is a wealth of information in the book, and anyone hoping to understand the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century in the U.S. will be well rewarded by reading Lepore's work.

Not unlike most things in life, I came across the creator of Wonder Woman quite by accident while doing a net search several years ago. Boom! Holy lasso of truth, this guy had me freaking out and I wasn't a Wonder Woman fan to begin with. Really, I grew up on Superman and the Green Lantern.
William Moulton Marston (1893-1947) was a man that might be considered ahead of his time. He was a psychologist, inventor, author, comic book writer, polygamist, feminist, and the creator of Wonder Woman. While The Secret History of Wonder Woman is classified under the category of Women's Studies, I found this book to really be more of a biography of Marston who was not only a brilliant and very accomplished person, but also a man very much ahead of his time.
This book delves into the character development of Wonder Woman and her evolution during Marston's life and her eventual decline after WWII and Marston's death when the character went downhill and became a man hunting secretary. Put in historical perspective, WW fell under a new stewardship and no longer had a war to fight which boxed her in a very limited corner based on Marston's successor who had neither his interests, vision, or creativity. Despite my lack of passion for WW, I actually found myself enjoying this part of the book because the material was anything but dull and the number of influences from Marston's own domestic situation and the women he was involved with were both subtle and overt. There was a lot that Marston borrowed from which included the development of a lie detector test (WW's Lasso of Truth) to the slave bracelets worn by his domestic partner Olive Byrne. If you are looking for kinky, Marston was apparently into bondage with another woman who sort of came and went out of the domestic picture. You might interpret the shackles WW always seemed to be breaking free of was a reference to sexual bondage, but it also might have been a physical manifestation of breaking free of the mores of society or the restrictions imposed on women in contemporary society. Possibly it was just getting freedom from a male dominated world with all those super hero guys.
As for Marston, he must have been one heck of a guy. His legal wife Sadie primarily supported their extended family because Marston was not particularly into money. The two main women in his life remained devoted to him until his death from skin cancer and they stuck by him when he developed Polio in 1943. As for Sadie and Olive, they remained together until Olive Byrne's death in the 1980's. His legal wife Elizabeth (aka Sadie) was also a psychologist, lawyer, and after Marston's death even tried to pitch herself unsuccessfully for Marston's job as she became the sole breadwinner of the the family which included house mom Byrne and her two sons with Marston and Sadie's son and daughter. Byrne had an interesting feminist lineage. Her mother was Margaret Sanger's sister. If you can keep this and more straight, which is fairly easy despite the level of detail, it makes for one interesting story.
I'm not certain which story actually wins out here. Is it the protracted story of WW or the story of Marston and family which was decidedly unconventional in the sense that it wasn't driven by religious beliefs? In the end I have to think Marston's personal story trumps WW, but the reality is that both stories are so closely connected that they work well together.
Bottom line is I absolutely loved this book. It was so well thought out, researched, constructed, and well written that it was hard to put down.

I know that other people have given this a good review but I just can't. I don't know if maybe I didn't read the blurb well enough or what, but this book was not what I suspected. Maybe I would have been interested in a biography of the man who created Wonder Woman along with a little history of feminism, but because that's not why I got the book, I can't give this one a good review. Besides the title, the image on the cover, and a few excepts from the comics, the vast majority of this book has nothing to do with Wonder Woman. I was expecting something that had to do a very little bit about the creation of Wonder Woman and then a lot about how she affected society.

This book is a significant work of herstory, guaranteed to change the way you view Wonder Woman and very likely the whole first wave of feminism.

It starts with one Harvard-educated sot at the dawn of the field of psychology who invents the lie detector and performs some rather dodgy experiments that get him thrown out of academia for good. He is supported by his harem of three women concurrently, two of them living with him and their children by him. The book does bog down heavily (and seemingly endlessly for several chapters) in the details of his travails and the gobbledygook of early psychology.

The book is at its best when the author reveals the actual development of the Wonder Woman character and not only the roles that various feminists play in the development of the super-shero, but also in media and society in the first half of the 20th century. The life of Margaret Sanger, for one, is interwoven throughout, which is fortunate, one supposes, because without her efforts, this ménage a trois and quatre would either not have been possible or might have resulted in a litter of offspring.

The most distressing and revelatory passage regarding the regarding the constant images of bondage in the strip is to be found on p. 238, where Marston is quoted as writing: “This, my dear friend, is the one truly great contribution of my Wonder Woman strip to moral education of the young. The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound—enjoy¬ submission to kind authority, wise authority, not merely tolerate such submission. Wars will only cease when humans enjoy being bound.”

The rejoinder to that, from an Education professor: “The social purpose which he claims is open to very serious objection…It is just such submission that he claims he wants to develop that makes dictator dominance possible. From the standpoint of social ideals, what we want in America and the world is cooperation and not submission.” Well stated.

In any case, regardless of the reader’s interest in Wonder Woman (I confess to having almost none), this is a compelling account of bohemian 20th century mores in a certain socio-economic milieu, feminism, gender roles, and semiotics. Fasten your seat belts, lasso, chains, or whatever other means of bondage you might prefer; it is one wild ride in that invisible plane.

I wasn't sure that anyone could tell me anything new about Wonder Woman-- and I was wrong. I was a big fan of Wonder Woman comics starting in the 60's-- not so much the TV show (which I didn't watch because I was being a bit of snob and did not have a television through most of the 70's-- not even to watch PBS) and I had heard quite a bit about the iconic figure that was one of the few female superheroes that girls of my age had to identify with.

Jill Lapore writes a wonderful, racy history of the development of Wonder Woman. I had heard that she was the creation of a psychologist but I had no idea of the wonderful tangled life of William Moulton Marston and the women he shared it with. Of course we all knew the lasso of truth was a deep psychological symbol. Didn't we?

If you are a fan of the history of comics, or a Wonder Woman fan, or maybe just a woman who remembers Wonder Woman as offering a change from the other female characters in comics who were always having to be rescued, then you might enjoy this. If you just want to read a really quirky origin study that begins in 1910, long before the character made her appearance, then I heartily recommend this book.

I had a friend who got a bit tired of me telling her bits and pieces from the book as we lunched-- so tired that she grabbed it every time I laid down at the office and started reading it herself.

I wish I'd read the reviews about the audio version of this book before I bought it. I love Jill Lapore's work--have read many of her books. Who knew she had a scr-e-e-chy voice? I wish I'd bought the paperback, if it's out in paperback. Don't think I can return this for an exchange, can I?

This is an surprising story of a very kooky one time Harvard Professor who sinks in the academic world and turns to film and comics to make some income. Marston was an early supporter of feminism and sexual freedom lived in a household with two sometimes three women. His first wife supported them all, the second women handled the domestic tasks and had two children by him. The story spans the first 7 decades of the 20th century and is expertly told by Harvard historian and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore.
She has dug into some unique primary sources to weave the story of these three people and their household.

"The Secret History of Wonder Woman" is an annoying book. One gets the strong feeling that Ms. (or should I say "Dr.") Lepore was doing some research in the use of Wonder Woman as a feminist totem, found out about the bizarre life story of its creator and decided to pull a book together. As a result, the first two-thirds of the book is about the creator, with references to how traits of one of the women in his life was incorporated into a trait of the comic heroine or how an episode from his life became a story line. There is a lot of jumping around from one period in his life to another, and lots of factoids thrown in (sort of in the nature of a book by Sarah Vowell or Bill Bryson, but Lepore is not as gifted at this type of literary stew), resulting a bit of figurative dizziness.

Things improve a bit when the actual title character is invented and Lepore makes an effort to track her rise, her demise and her resurrection as the feminist totem mentioned above -- specifically on the cover of the first regular issue of Ms. magazine. But in this section she does the same thing -- randomly throwing in details of the lives of the creator of the character, with all of his weird views and behaviors.

Until I got to the last third of the book, I would have given this book two stars, so the actual story of Wonder Woman does redeem the book a bit.

However, there's something else you should know, and it's a complaint that I utter relatively often: WHERE WAS THE EDITOR? I came across the following errors in my customary casual read, which suggests that there are many more where these come from:

-- She refers to someone getting a JD degree in the early 1900s. As an attorney, I know that in those days law schools awarded LL.B. (bachelor of laws) degrees, not JDs. and a simple Google search confirmed this. Later on in the book, she actually refers to this person's LL.B. degree.
-- She repeats the same quotation within two pages.
-- She states that because of the similarity of the names of some of the people involved, she's going to refer to "Olive Byrne" as just "Olive" going forward and then proceeds to refer to her as "Olive Byrne" for the balance of the book.
-- She refers to a doctor specializing "on" (not "in") a particular field.

And so it goes. When I buy a book (which I do all the time) I don't expect a guaranty that it's good. However, I think I'm justified in expecting that it's been edited to correct obvious errors.

I'm not really a comic reader, so I know Wonder Woman through my husband (who does follow comics) and the old, 1970's TV show starring Lynda Carter. In other words, I know what Wonder Woman is, but I wasn't familiar with her back story.

When my husband saw me reading this, he asked what the dirt on it was. I could only shake my head...because this book is all over the place (but in a good way). It felt like the Forrest Gump of comic book history because there is nothing in early 20th century history that does not appear in this book (but in a good way).

I actually am not sure where to start with this review. I'm not going to go into the actual contents because, well, you have to read it to believe it. I have to applaud Lepore on how well she organized this book. The journey to Wonder Woman is long and circuitous, but Lepore nimbly keeps the readers in the right lane. Because of this, it is easy to follow each of the different threads as Lepore introduces and then explores them.

Some people may be wary of this book because there is just so much in it, but please don't let that put you off. This doesn't read like a history book--instead, it is like Lepore is telling you an unbelievable, but true, story. At times, it has an edge of gossip to it, which is just the dash of spice it needs to keep it from becoming too dry and factual. I found that I wanted to know more about this unconventional family, but I also know that what Lepore was telling me was only what she could back up with citations (this book is very well cited, but Lepore uses end-notes, so you can choose to follow the citations or not)

All in all, this is a fascinating read and it is one that I think anyone could find at least one thing that interests them. If you want a book to blow your mind, pick this one up.

I loved this book. Harvard historian Jill Lapore reveals the fascinating lives of the William Marston family. As a historian, Lapore attends to context. Wonder Woman's bracelets, tiara, lasso, costume and invisible airplane are all discussed. The Secret History of Wonder Woman is about women's suffrage, the women's movement, bondage and freedom and a remarkable extended family.
Just before finishing the epilogue of this book my wife Lura and I saw the movie Wonder Woman. With the book fresh on my mind, I appreciated the nuances of the movie. The movie got so much right.

Once again, Jill Lepore weaves a singular narrative from many separate threads, showing how feminism, women's suffrage, birth control and comic books contributed to a new understanding of American women. In part, a feminist history of the twentieth century, the book is joyful to read because of the powerfully drawn characters.

It is also a reminder of how the most unconventional people are the ones who wind up changing the world.

This is a well researched book about William Moulton Marston and the women in his life, both real and fictional. Marston was a fascinating character; a self-promoter, a polygamist, a feminist, an inventor, a psychologist, a comic book writer. Equal time is also given to Marston's wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and his lover Olive Byrne. The author does a great job in showing how specific incidents in Marston's life are reflected in his Wonder Woman stories,

As a die hard Wonder Woman fan since childhood and a total bookworm I was beyond thrilled to receive this as a gift. If you are expecting a riveting face paced book you will be disappointed, however if you are interested in discovering a piece of history this is for you. It not only gives you a glimpse into the odd yet brilliant mans life, it delves into feminism in a way I had not experienced. Other than the basics of the women's rights movement I had never given sufferage much thought. I loved learning about the struggles and what these ladies went through to give me the opportunities I have today. Yes, this book is about Wonder Woman's creator, but more than that it is a history lesson. You will walk away from this book being a more interesting and informed person. And that is good for everybody.

Wow, what an extremely difficult book to review. The book follows the author of Wonder Woman, William Marston and the strange life that he led. It tries to portray the times and uses Wonder Woman as a vehicle for describing the journey of Woman's rights. It is very odd that Marston was involved with the niece of perhaps the most important feminist, Sangar who championed birth control. It is an extremely important book but it took at times such a long and torturous path that it was difficult to bear with it. I am glad however that I read it and I hope all Woman do. It is a tragedy that there still has never been a woman American president or the fact that there is no wage parity, or why even do we never make movies of the lives and battles of the brave woman who fought for the equal rights for women. Women really need to stand up and care and celebrate the lives of the people that has made it possible for them to own land & property, to vote ..,,

The Secret History of Wonder Woman traces the origin of the comic book creation from a man inspired by both the Women's Suffrage Movement and his intriguing personal relationships with the women in his life. Ms. Lepore's research provides ample context as she reveals surprising information about her subjects. This book is a good match for you if you are interested in American cultural history, the beginnings of the comic book industry, and of course, Wonder Woman.

Heard the author interviewed on radio and it sounded fascinating. Reading the book, it definitely has interesting themes but they are not well narrated at all. The book is poorly written...maybe I'm just spoiled and used to excellent writing. Could not get past the first 75 pages - life is too short and there are many, many superb books out there.

I only ever had a casual admiration for Wonder Woman, not having been motivated to really delve into the history. The title of this book drew me in and once started, was a fascinating read from beginning to end. I never knew so many interesting people were involved in shaping the influences behind the comic book. Hardcore fans and casual admirers alike can get a lot out of this book. This book is great to educate the reader not only of Wonder Woman, but the beginnings of the lie detector, suffragettes, and the birth control movement. I certainly have a greater appreciation for (the original) Wonder Woman. I was highly impressed with the array of material information was pulled from - college lectures, journals, court rulings, employment recommendation letters, etc. Very interesting, authentic, personal touches. This book is well-researched, but was written in an easily readable style that compelled me to read on with an enthusiasm I've rarely felt for a non-fiction book.

Jill Lepore has uncovered one of those 'truth is stranger than fiction' tales in her excellent "The Secret History of Wonder Woman". As a lifelong comics fan, and believer that Wonder Woman was important as an icon even when DC Comics was rarely publishing stories about her that befit that designation, I had heard that her creator was also the inventor of the lie detector, and rumors of an unconventional personal life. But I had little idea of the roles William Moulton Marston and the women who supported him - primarily Sadie Holloway and Olive Byrne, although there were others - played her creation, and how their vision differed from the frequently rebooted character I have read in DC Comics' stories over the last thirty years. And I had no knowledge of the influence of the women's movements of the turn of the 20th century had on any of the players and their creation.

It's remarkable that Lepore is able to familiarize her readers with that history, and the outlandish adventures of Marston, in just the few pages of this book. If I have a critique, it's that I'd like more of everything. More history of feminism in the Western world, more analysis of what became of the character after Marston's death and especially more insight the lives and perspectives of Holloway and Byrne. That last topic is the real tragedy here, as the author brings us to understand that we know so little about these women because they were afraid to reveal much of themselves. For the gains made in women's rights in their lifetime, often spearheaded by members of their friends and family, that they could not experience the liberation and honesty that were hallmarks of the character they helped create...moved me in ways I did not expect to be moved when I picked up a history of a comic book hero.

Feminists, comic book fans and especially feminist comic book fans owe it to themselves to read this book. As important as it is entertaining, it should be a staple of women's and pop culture studies for years to come.

This fascinating co-biography of William Marston and his creation - Wonder Women - is an intriguing and delightful study. By turns as ridiculous and overblown as any comic-book adventure. The difference is that it's true. Another in Lepore's growing body of work. Unlike anything you have read in the last year - and far more entertaining.

The secret history offered in Jill Lepore's fascinating new book is not so much the unconventional life of Wonder Woman's creator(s), which was already a matter of public record, and would by itself feel more gossipy than journalistic. Instead, the book's great strength is the way it ties the lives of William Moulton Marston, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, and Olive Byrne into the social and intellectual history of the early twentieth century: feminism, suffrage, birth control, the lie detector, the academic study of psychology, and more. Those unfamiliar with this material may have known in a general sense why Wonder Woman plays a role in feminist iconography, but can scarcely have guessed how deeply connected the character is to the movement's mid-century history. Lepore strikes an excellent balance between this background and the biography of Marston, Holloway, and Byrne, whose deeply unconventional existence informed the content of Wonder Woman stories, and whose deceptions capture the fraught nature of the divide between activists' personal and political lives. The book is richly illustrated, including many images from the original Wonder Woman stories. I'm sure I'm not the only reading who wants after those glimpses to experience the stories for myself, and Lepore has provided a handy index of them for the curious. This compelling volume is well worth reading by anyone interested in the histories of feminism, comic books, psychology, free love, or the lie detector, or who is fascinated by the thought of a book that could draw together such seemingly disparate topics.

Wonder Woman is a multi-generational icon. Here you begin an understanding of her story, her impact on feminism, politicical thought, gender equality and more. Also in this book we get one of the best looks at where she came from. Where and how Wonder Woman was born and how she developed.

Maybe this level of background is only interesting to a geek like me. But I dout it. I think anyone who has ever been touched by her stories and mythology, would enjoy exploring in greater detail her genesis and the complex factors that shaped her.

The book has nearly 100 pages of notes and other back matter for those, like me, interested in deep trivia.

To compliment this book, I also suggest:

Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine

Wonder Woman: The Story of the the store Princess

Wonder Woman: The Complete History

The present book is written from the point of view of an historian, by an actual historian.
If you love history as much as you love comic books or Wonder Woman in particular, you are going to love this book.

Harvard prof Jill Lepore has a talent for uncovering and educating in the most delightful manner about the covalences of historical periods. She did that with Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin and does so just as skillfully with this book.

Wonder Woman, as Lepore demonstrates, is intrinsically tied to and born of the women's rights movement, from suffrage, through birth control, and full equality with men. In fact, Wonder Woman's manifesto, according to William Moulton Marston, the man who created her, came straight from Margaret Sanger's Woman and the New Race. And in the mid-40s, when Olive Byrne had to offer guidance on writing Wonder Woman comics to Joye Hummel, she handed her a copy of Sanger's book, advising her to read it.

William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman after years of knocking around in the academic world of psychology. His main endeavor was to develop a foolproof, scientifically based method for detecting lying. He did invent such a device, but it wasn't particularly accurate; though Marston tested and tested and published and published and wasn't above skewing and distorting and, well, lying in support of his idea. In Wonder Woman, the lie detector gets whipped out on a regular basis. And till his dying day, Marston claimed invention of the lie detector as among his great achievement. (The Polygraph, the efficacy of which experts still dispute, was credited to police detective and Phd John Larson.)

Marston proved good at anything promoting Marston. However, he wasn't much good at earning a living; he managed an academic career that started high and consistently worked downward. Fortunately for him, as a Harvard (BA, LLB, and PhD [psychology]) student he met Elizabeth "Sadie" Holloway, a Radcliffe student. They shared interests, fell in love, and married. She was a woman who worked and worked hard. She supported Marston and their iconoclastic family, consisting of the two of them, their two children, Olive Byrne (abandoned by her mother Ethel, supported by Sanger, mother to two additional Marston children), and occasionally Marjorie Huntley, until Marston hit upon a cultural phenomena that enriched them, Wonder Woman.

So, to fully tell the story of how Wonder Woman sprang from the women's movement and to explain some of the superhero's kinkier aspects (among them bondage and plenty of chains) Lepore weaves together the history of women's rights struggle, birth control, the development of psychology as an academic discipline, the rise of new media (film and comics), and the liberalizing of sexual mores.

While The Secret History of Wonder Woman is great cultural and intellectual history, it's also a rousing tale of people who lived outside the bounds of commonly accepted morality at the time when the price for such difference carried a hefty price. While William Marston was something of a self-aggrandizer, often times a dictator in his home who acted against his own principles of equality, it can be said he created a fictional character that made a difference, and that supported his lifetime idea: the world would be a better place, a more peaceful place, if run by women.

As Marston said in a press release quoted by Lepore:

"`Wonder Woman' was conceived by Dr. Marston to set up a standard among children and young people of strong, free, courageous womanhood; and to combat the idea that women are inferior to men, and to inspire girls to self-confidence and achievement in athletics, occupations and professions monopolized by men."

So kudos to Lepore for establishing Marston's significance in cultural history, for showing us how influential a medium we might think of as lowly can be, and for doing it all in a lively fashion.

Jammed cheek to jowl with photos of the principals and Wonder Woman panels (many in color), plus footnotes, bibliography, and index.

As girls, our three daughters were Wonder Woman fans, valuing her heroic qualities and independence compared to the submissive, sentimentalized women featured in most popular culture. They all love this book for the historical context it offers and for the behind-the-scenes story of the people who created and developed Wonder Woman.

A wonder book this Wonder Woman book. It is a terrific book to give anyone, any age who likes the history or stories of super heroes. A nice hard copy to add to any book collection. I can tell you I am brutally honest when it comes to products I purchase. This is a winner.

I taught women's studies in the 1980s and found the suffrage and feminist content of this book to be very familiar ground. Nothing new, either in the historical aspect or the "Wonder Woman as feminist" iconography. The revelation for me was the life of Marston. In some ways, he was like the "Zelig" of the early to mid 20th century feminist movement, both by family ties and social leanings.

I found Marston's life, polyamorous lifestyle and kink proclivities very well examined here in fascinating detail. For any younger adult who thinks they invented an alternate lifestyle, I'd urge the reading of this book. Marston successfully and openly flaunted convention. His early death was tragic but that his unconventional family lived on for decades is a testament to their bonds.

For those not familiar with the history of the women's movement or the canon of Wonder Woman, this book provides a fine entry to that study.

I wonder if the title of this book was the idea of the editor or the author. It doesn't feel like the title an author of a book like this would have come up with, for the history of Wonder Woman has hardly been a secret. Anyone who has read any major or minor histories of comic books will find the main outlines of the story "secret," and I'm sure Jill Lepore knows this. I therefore blame the title of the book on her editor. I have, by the way, made four similar guesses about book titles in the past in which the author's told me that an editor or publisher had changed the title.

Those familiar with Wonder Woman's story know that she was created by one of the strangest bird's in the history of comics. William Moulton Marston essentially believed the world would be better off if men agreed to live in submissive relationships with women. He also claimed to have invented "THE" Lie Detector, whereas what he did as develop one time or lie detector, one type that did not lead to any contemporary designs, and notthe Unlike most men and women who pushed for equality of opportunity between Marston advocated thta men become "bottoms," sexually and otherwise. He lives in a relationship with more than one woman, but even when readers were unaware of that, from ne arly the beginning readers notices the bondage aspect of the comic. One of Diana's most powerful tools was a bondage device. And the spanking! No comic in history has had as much spanking as Wonder Woman in its early years. And it wasn't just Diana spanking others. In one famous still Etta gives Wonder Woman a spanking. Never has any one writers sexual fantasies (or at least short of R. Crumb) found their way onto the printed page.

Wonder Woman's truly interesting secret history comes in those years after Marston's departure when she became powered and depowered to excessive degree. For several years she lost her powers and simply became Barbie.

Is there room for Wonder Woman in today's popular culture? One wonders. It has been ages since there was a compelling Wonder Woman story arc. Warner Brothers declined a Joss Whedon penned film. David Kelley (one of the least qualified people to make a Wonder Woman film) tried to do a new TV series after brilliantly casting Adrianne Palicki in the lead role. One of the major factors in killing off the series was rabid fanboy complaints about the updated uniform, where Diana would not be wearing those granny panty bottoms. I real a lot of comics, but I must confess taht except for when she shows up in a JLA comic, I simply ignore Wonder Woman. I find her a lot less interesting than Power Girl (who is fascinating in most incarnations for having lost her home world not once, but twice, having lost both Krypton and Earth-2) or Catwoman or any of a number of other DC female heroes, not to mention Marvel, where there are probably 30 or 40 more compelling female heroes. Would you really rather read 100 Wonder Woman issues than 100 Captain Marvel or Spider-Woman comics.

The one thing this book has going for it is detail. I still consider the definitive Wonder Woman book to be Les Daniels's WONDER WOMAN: THE COMPLETE HISTORY, but this provides a few more stories, even if it provides fewer secrets than one might wish.

I'll close by saying that while I'm on the verge of simply writing Wonder Woman off as a super hero for our age, I am waiting anxiously to see what Grant Morrison will do with the character on his turn. Of the DC Big Three, he has proven himself to be perhaps the finest Superman story teller of all time and an interesting if wildly inconsistent Batman writer. If Morrison can't overcome the difficulties in making Wonder Woman relevant again, I just might be giving up on the character for good.

"Feminism made Wonder Woman. And then Wonder Woman remade feminism, which hasn't always been good for feminism." So much more than I'd expected, Jill Lepore has constructed in The Secret History of Wonder Woman, a history of her creative benefactor, William Moulton Marston and the women who essentially were Wonder Woman, in this scholarly study of the the storeian woman who has fans of every age and gender. This is an excellent resource for students of Women's Studies as well as Philosophy or History, but most importantly, it is incredibly well researched and written. The archival goldmine Ms. Lepore unearthed would have been dribble had she not presented her rewards in such a readable format. It's outstanding.

Interesting and fast moving - tells the story of all the people responsible for Wonder Woman and the historical movements that shaped the development of her character. The more salacious details about the originator's polyamory and interest in bondage were interesting - and goes to show that we certainly did not invent alternative sexuality in the 21st Century. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more by this author.

This is primarily a biography of an authentic American character, William Moulton Marston, a quite brilliant man who was a lawyer, writer, journalist, scientist, inventor and comic hero creator. Truly a remarkable man in almost every way, including the household he shared with his wife, another woman and the children he sired by both. He was also, on occasion, a braggart and charlatan. Now I came to this book with an advantage most won’t have: I had learned about Marston in reading the long, troubled history of the polygraph. Marston claimed to have invented the “lie detector”. In fact, Marston did invent a primitive form of what came to be known as the polygraph as well as discovering systolic blood pressure.

Grafted on to the history of the very interesting Marston is an attempt to link Wonder Woman, Marston’s comic book hero(ine) creation, with the feminist movement.

The overall effect is a not unpleasant experience as author Jill Lepore weaves her way from truth to half-truth to fiction to speculation and back over and over. Lepore, in the spirit of the crusading feminist bends over backwards to bestow credit for Wonder Woman on Elizabeth Holloway Marston, William Moulton Marston’s legal wife, and Olive Byrne, who seems to have been a part of a peasant tripartite marriage.

Wonder Woman was a great success, becoming the only enduring female super hero, amongst Superman, Batman and the Green Lantern. Personally, I loved Wonder Woman comics: she fought America’s enemies, wore fantastic outfits and to a young boy’s eyes was incredibly sexy.

I didn’t know at that time that Wonder Woman was also an ardent feminist, an early leader in the woman’s rights movement. In fact, her role didn’t become apparent until the late 1960s and 1970s when self-proclaimed feminist leaders hailed her as inspiration.

Don’t get me wrong: this is an excellent book. It is the product of assiduous research. The reader, however, should exercise caution to discriminate between provable fact and author’s misstatements and speculation. “Inventor of the lie detector”, for example, isn’t a lie – it just isn’t quite accurate.

Students and fanciers of comic book art won’t find much of value here: a panel here, a panel there. No, the big draw is William Moulton Marston and the two women closest to him. These three people are the creators of Wonder Woman and their story s fascinating.

Jerry

A good read but more like a college thesis paper than a biography. However, if you're from the comic book generation, most of it is a fascinating read. Ah, the innocent days of our youth where we were more impressed by Wonder Woman's magical powers than by her gorgeous body.

This was a fascinating history and a great story that was at times hampered by weak writing: unclear (which lady in Marston's life is this) repetitive (we get it the family kept their arrangement secret). These issues often made the book feel like it was dragging on.

With this said, I really loved the history and the book was interesting.

This book was a little bit hard to get into at first because it tells the author's story from when he was very young. Don't let that stop you from reading the rest. This is a well written and incredibly researched book about the origin of WW and her impact on feminism in the 20th century.

The parts I found most interesting dealt with Marston pitching the idea of a superwoman to DC and how the whole character and WW mythos came together. Another fascinating thing I learned was that Marston is credited as the creator of the systolic blood pressure test. This led to the modern day lie detector.

Good book and great research.

William Marsden Moulton was a remarkable man. He not only invented Wonder Woman but also the lie detector machine. This is his story and the story of the remarkable women in his life including Margaret Sanger the Birth Control suffragist.

I wanted to like this book and it turned out just okay, thanks for the most part to the author reading her own book. This is rarely successful in my opinion, except for autobiographies by famous people.

The scholarship seems sound, but the conclusions Dr. Lepore draws seem far fetched in some cases. She spent little time on the TV series which made me love Diana Prince and Wonder Woman.

If you enjoy Wonder Woman and want to know her history this book is worthwhile to look into.

For the audiobook: Please, please, please - stop letting authors read their own books. Fascinating book - read by someone with a voice and delivery that is about as enjoyable to listen to as an empty gravel truck. Love the book - hate the reader.

And I could not be more serious about using the the word 'revealed'.
Who knew?!
So much of the Wonder Woman persona is based on real people...people who were even more outrageous than the comic character herself.

The book is a little slow going at first, but hang in there, so to speak. WW is a tamed down image of what her creator wanted in a woman, and in some cases, HAD.

The research that brought Jill Lepore's tale to fruition was with a fine tooth comb, clearly few, if any, stones were left unturned. Over and over you find yourself saying 'Oh MY!' as you read.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN is really a biography of her creator William Moulton Marston and the influences that molded the character. Marsdon grew up in a house of woman, several unmarried aunts and married a childhood sweetheart who was an ardent feminist in the early days of the movement. He studied at Harvard, eschewing football for academics while his future wife went to Mt. Holyoke, a bastion for female rights.

Marston became a psychologist and inventor(he had a hand in the lie detector) before he became a comic book writer.

The early going was a bit dry and I found myself skipping ahead. The meat of the story comes as he develops Wonder Woman.

I'm a little concerned: if several mistakes were not caught on the first page (technically page xi of "The Splash Page"), what lies within?
Wonder Woman did NOT appear with "golden" bracelets, her lasso did not make people "tell the truth," not all of "Her gods were female," she did not wear "blue underpants," etc.

If these simple facts are wrong, where else does this book veer from the accurate? Perhaps this might seem like nit-picking, but impeccable research should be applied to Wonder Woman, the greatest comic book character ever!

(Just in case you are wondering: her bracelets were steel-blue colored until the late 1980s; her lasso compelled people to obey her (or whoever held the lasso), and she could command them to tell the truth, among other things; she was known to swear by male gods ("thunderbolts of Jove!), and she wore blue, star-spangled skirting and leggings that resembled women's athletic shorts).

You had me at the title! I have been a Wonder Woman fan since I was a kid. First in the comic book Justice League of America then I started collecting her own comic book. This was not just about the comic book legend but much more. The evolution of woman and womens rights throughout the years, decades, etc.. It is a fascinating read . I thought I knew everything about this legend but I was wrong. I read it in three days I could not put it down but my kids needed to be feed so I had to put it down. Great comic book strips are included as well as some cool photos.

For every Wonder Woman fan or reader of women rights.

A must read!

I wasn't all that impressed with what is essentially a biography of Wonder Woman's creator, with a few tidbits thrown in about the amazing the store. I just didn't find Marston's life story that interesting.

Wonder Woman's creator not only invented the lie detector but lived a secret life with two women at the core of the suffrage movement. An irresistible history of the role of one man and his bondage-prone creation in the American women's liberation movement.

The story is interesting. But this is one more example of why an author should not narrate her own book. For some reason, authors feel the need to make their subjects sound shallow and irritating. Definitely read the book, don't listen to the book.

very similar to an actual illustrated book from when i was a child....

there is a lot of "back story" of the author in the beginning, which is a bit boring. still, it is important info.

i love the description of all of ww's adornments from her earrings, tiara, bracelets, lasso, etc. and how she got her invisible plane is a very cool story.

anyone who loves ww like i do will totally appreciate this history.

recommended.

I saw Jill Lepore speak on this book at The Smithsonian last night. She and her research is fascinating and entertaining. The book is surprising and delightful. The illustrations are really fun. Purchasing the book is a must for the illustrations alone.

A 3.5 star history, Lepore's "Wonder Woman" is oddly repetitious and scrambled. The research tends to demean feminist leaders—Margaret Sanger, Gloria Steinem—for no particular purpose. By parading Marston through episodes, Lepore soft pedals the emergence of a female comic book hero while glorying in the randy nuttiness of a failed, self-promoting psychologist. Implications of who slept in who's bed offer nothing to the pop culture biography, much less to women's history.

This was a disappointment. I expected better writing from a Harvard publication. I love Wonder Woman and this book does not honor the legacy. The prose was poorly wrought as if the author could not decide whether she was writing creative non-fiction or a scholarly piece. There are discrepancies in the narrative which are subtle, yet discordant enough to distract the reader. The connections and conclusions drawn by the author are tenous to the point of mere conjecture rather than fact. I gave this book two stars instead of one because 1) the cover is gorgeous and 2) there is a bibliography that I may use to do my own research.
I am glad I checked this out from the library instead of purchasing it as I had originally intended. Wonder Woman and her creator deserve better.

Margaret Sanger Quotes – Founder of Planned Parenthood? How about rabid eugenics advocate/proselytizer?

Woman and the New Race, ch. 6: “The Wickedness of Creating Large Families.” Here, Sanger argues that, because the conditions of large families tend to involve poverty and illness, it is better for everyone involved if a child’s life is snuffed out before he or she has a chance to pose difficulties to its family.
[We should] apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.

“Plan for Peace” from Birth Control Review (April 1932, pp. 107-108)
Article 1. The purpose of the American Baby Code shall be to provide for a better distribution of babies… and to protect society against the propagation and increase of the unfit.
Article 4. No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child, and no man shall have the right to become a father, without a permit…
Article 6. No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one birth.

“America Needs a Code for Babies,” 27 Mar 1934
Give dysgenic groups [people with “bad genes”] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.

April 1932 Birth Control Review, pg. 108
Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.

Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.
We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
A woman’s duty: To look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes… to speak and act in defiance of convention.

The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1
[The most penetrating thinkers] are coming to see that a qualitative factor as opposed to a quantitative one is of primary importance in dealing with the great masses of humanity.

Pivot of Civilization, 1922. Here, Margaret Sanger speaks on her eugenic philosophy – that only the types of “quality” people she and her peers viewed as worthy of life should be allowed to live.
Such parents swell the pathetic ranks of the unemployed. Feeble-mindedness perpetuates itself from the ranks of those who are blandly indifferent to their racial responsibilities. And it is largely this type of humanity we are now drawing upon to populate our world for the generations to come. In this orgy of multiplying and replenishing the earth, this type is pari passu multiplying and perpetuating those direst evils in which we must, if civilization is to survive, extirpate by the very roots.

The Need for Birth Control in America (quoted by Angela Franks.)
Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.

Lepore’s book is so blatantly and bizarrely -fictional- that I can’t even begin to understand how she got it published under the Harvard
historian banner. This book is only a little better than a hardback version of the National Enquirer. There are HUNDREDS of historical inaccuracies, especially when writing about the Marston family 'history'. There are incredibly damning stories put forth by Lepore as fact. There are also some clearly intentional misrepresentations. The author, under the Harvard banner, is selling fiction as fact. This book is as big a sham as its author.