A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen - The Creation of Anne Boleyn

This book is very interesting facts about Anne Boleyn, but is very dry and reads like a historical thesis. I am slowly reading through it as I am supposedly a distant relative of hers on the Howard side. Susan seem to be really wanting to get out the facts about Anne rather than hearsay which has previously been written and I praise her for that, but it is a slow read.

This book will be most enjoyable to people who are already well acquainted with Anne's story and have read already
read most of the historical fiction and biographies written about her. I enjoyed reading the author's opinions about
the other books, movies and tv series featuring Anne. The book is not a biography, it is a unique look at Anne's
changing persona through the years.

This is interesting cultural history, focusing on the figure of Anne Boleyn, as seen in novels and films. The author is pro-Anne and seems to be kinder to writers and directors who share her view. (Philippa Gregory is not her favorite author.) What I like particularly is that she interviews some people who have been involved in representing Anne--the actress who starred as Anne in THE TUDORS for example. Everyone seems to have his or her own Anne Boleyn. History has given us an ambiguous figure and to a great extent we see what we want to see. This is true of creators of popular culture and also of those with high literary aspirations. The interview with Hilary Mantel is particularly instructive. Historical novelists, she says, inevitably write out of their own time.

Whether we view Anne as "good" or "bad" seems to depend on the standards and perspectives of our own era. But however she is viewed, Anne Boleyn continues to fascinate. This book tells us a great deal about why that is, and how the images have shifted over time.

I have been a huge supporter (if you will) of Queen Anne Boleyn, one of history's most intriguing and misunderstood women. In fact, I have a very hard time accepting any book or media depiction--fact or fiction--which glosses over her complexity. Was she a pawn of a grasping father and uncle who, at the end, left her and her brother George to their horrific fates; or was she a cold and calculating homewrecker who got her just deserts? Since Henry VIII (damn him) destroyed all her letters and other items, historians and laypeople can only guess from what otheer sources have gleamed about her.

While this book sheds little new light on who or what she was, the author discusses how popular culture, thanks in no small part to Showtime's The Tudors, has breathed new life into the question of just who Anne Boleyn was. I especially enjoyed the author's interview with Natalie Dormer, who played Anne in the series (and was amazing), and how she fought to have Anne be less of a one-dimensional temptress and more of a smart, savvy and powerful woman in her own right who may have been far more instrumental in bringing about the Reformation than first believed.

Interestingly enough, Ms. Bordo and others take some serious pot-shots at author Philippa Gregory, whose The Other Boleyn Girl not only takes liberties with history, but practically rewrites it under the guise of "veracity". Since I am not fond of the "mean-girl" Anne, Ms. Gregory's work and I didn't suit (yes I read it).

A relatively quick and engaging read for those who just can't get enough of the ill-fated queen.

This work by Bordo collects the various myths and mistakes made and perpetuated by historians and compares those errors to the available primary sources in an attempt to sort out the "real Anne" from the fictitious. The reader is left with more questions than answers but that may be the mark of a good historical work. After a visit to the Tower of London, one is left with more questions as the tour guides there, the Beef Eaters, insist that only Anne's heart is buried in the chapel there, not her remains as many other sources suggest. Another mystery to be solved.

I don't understand some of the negative reviews here. This book is not quite a biography, though of course you learn the basic details of Anne Boleyn's life. It's about the "cultural afterlife" of Anne as a figure, since the author acknowledges it's hard to get close to Anne as a person. It's an interesting approach that I think would work well with other historical figures.

This is not a fluff piece. The reviews accusing the author of arrogance are not used to the nature of critical writing. This is a thoughtful look at the cultural evolution of Anne Boleyn. It is a bit overly explanatory in some places, but overall a good read.

For someone who negates previous writers she is guilty of the same sins. There are no proofs so why spend page after page being disrespectful to other writers when all any can do is put their own spin on what little history has left us. Just too self absorbed to be taken seriously.

The book's title is most interesting--"The Creation of Anne Boleyn." In short, this book explores the social construction of Henry VIII's second wife and second queen. Much of the book focuses on (Page xvii) "how she has been imagined and represented over the centuries since her death. . . ." This is not, then, so much a biography of Anne Boleyn (although there are biographical elements) as a study of how others saw and defined her--whether for good or ill.

The author, Susan Bordo, carried out what she calls cultural detective work. She strives to show how many who have authored works about Boleyn write their own views into their analysis of her. In the process, she is critical of major authors on the subject such as Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory. And Bordo goes back to some of the Queen's contemporaries, who were implacable enemies of hers (e.g., Eustace Chapuys), and notes how critics of Boleyn even today tend to use those "out to get her" as serious sources).

Bordo describes the rapid fall of the Queen, with a perfect storm of negative events conspiring against her, and her ultimate death. The final chapter in the first part of the book (entitled "Queen, Interrupted") asks why Henry VIII went so far as to have her executed, when he could have simply ended their marriage and sent her to a nunnery. The answer takes on a psychological cast. I am not so sure how convinced I am so many years after the fact, in terms of such an effort, but it is interesting to contemplate. In the process of assessing her rise and fall, we get glimpses into some of the key players of the era--Thomas More, Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, and others. As one sees some of these major figures become doomed under Henry, Anne's fall is perhaps not so surprising.

Part II looks at depictions of Anne in literature and plays and the like. Part II is quite interesting--the portrayal of Anne Boleyn in movies. Bordo does a comparative analysis of how Boleyn is treated in a variety of movies (and TV series)--"Anne of a Thousand Days," "The Tudors," "The Six Wives of Henry VIII," "The Other Boleyn Girl," and "The Private Life of Henry VIII."

All in all, a well written book on a fascinating subject. The work made me think about Anne Boleyn in a different way, and that suggests that this volume is worth considering.

I just finished reading this book, and I am amazed - it's clever and completely different from everything else that has been written about Anne - not the history of the woman, but the history of the character she became once she entered the center-stage of Henry's Court.

For all the History and the many sides taken, I think this was exactly what was lacking - a cultural study behind the Persona that Anne became.

This book is definitely based around an interesting concept, but I had a few issues with it. The way Catherine was presented bothered me a bit, as it seemed rather unsympathetic I felt that there was a clear bias towards Anne. Sometimes it felt a bit disorganized, and it didn't seem like there was any real thesis. I also could have done with less criticizing of other authors and more discussion of why Anne is presented the way she is. The strongest part of the book was the author's interview with Natalie Dormer.

I had so many high hopes as a lover of Historical Fiction and all things Tudors - I adore Anne and really feel she has gotten a bad wrap in a lot of ways so the start of this book was great. Then it all went down hill fast - from constantly say the she doesn't want to make this a feminist discussion to actually making a feminist discussion - to spouting opinions left and right not research - to spending the last half of the book tearing down a fellow author. Fine you don't like Phillips Gregory but did she really have to write a whole half of a book about it and try and sell it to readers who came to hear NEW things or hear a NEW angle on the Queen who lost her head. No she shouldn't have or this book should be title - A Feminist Rant of Anne Boleyn and the people who write about her. I am only give two stars because before section 3 there was some information I hadn't heard explained that way before -- If you want really new info or a real book on research on Anne DO NOT READ THIS BOOK

This book tells the Ann Boleyn story reasonably well (always giving her the benefit of the doubt, which may be OK to do, considering the bad press she got from just about everybody else). But it also spends a lot of celebrity-fluff time telling us about various not very good movies and plays and novels. The latter part is repetitive and boring.

A wonderfully thorough look at both the woman (what little we can piece together about her from historical record) and the myth that's risen around her. Bordo makes it quite clear when she's speculating versus reporting hard fact, which is refreshing. She uses evidence to analyze the various interpretations of Anne over the centuries since her death, and provides a very complex look at a woman who was surely complex herself.

This book starts as an historical discussion, but later morphs into an exhaustive media review of all things Anne Boleyn, and concludes with philosophical discussion of postfeminism as a lens for depictions of Tudor history. The writing was uneven and repetitive, and failed to hold my attention.

I have always been interested in Anne Boleyn ever since I was a little girl. I first saw " Anne Of A Thousand Days" and I was hooked. I started my first book, The Concubine at age 9, and I have continued to be enthralled by her courage, strength and beauty. The book, The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen, is a fabulous book that truly gives you a full picture of Anne Boleyn. As a history major I have researched her life, and this book describes her life with true accuracy.

I was not a huge fan of yhis book starting out, because I felt the author was too harsh on Tudor historians who spent their career studying this time period and the people in it. However, she does very well sticking to the known facts about Anne Boleyn and painting a picture of her based on yhe facts. Despite enjoying this book, I feel the need to only give it three stars because some of yhe things she say about actual Tudor historians (versus her who only studied the period for the writing of this book.) Came off as a Facebook rant instead of a peer review.

This is a mostly academic treatise on how Anne Boleyn is portrayed in historical novels and
actural historical references to Henry XIII's second wife. Contemporary references about Anne
Boleyn by Catholic sources were very unflattering. On orders of King Henry XIII most all of
portraits and written references to Anne were destroyed after her beheading. Anne's personality
and manners, mostly formed by her time in the French court were considered much too forward
by many of her English contemporaries so what few references to Anne were colored by that
perception. The author seeks to sort out fact from fiction. So the book becomes rather tedious
after a while.

The beginning is good-- my interest was up and on point. Author questions the objectivity surrounding Anne primary resources and explains why people should give Anne the benefit of the doubt instead of automatically chastising Anne Boleyn as a wicked/manipulative woman.

On the other hand, the rest of the book is tedious and very critical. Author is VERY critical of any other work pertaining Anne Boleyn. I wanted to read more about the subject matter and not her personal impressions and assumptions of everyone else(historians, writers, actresses, directors, etc) in the Tudor/Boleyn topic. The author is clearly a Boleyn lover and tries to justify Anne above everything else.

I was not a huge fan of yhis book starting out, because I felt the author was too harsh on Tudor historians who spent their career studying this time period and the people in it. However, she does very well sticking to the known facts about Anne Boleyn and painting a picture of her based on yhe facts. Despite enjoying this book, I feel the need to only give it three stars because some of yhe things she say about actual Tudor historians (versus her who only studied the period for the writing of this book.) Came off as a Facebook rant instead of a peer review.

This is a mostly academic treatise on how Anne Boleyn is portrayed in historical novels and
actural historical references to Henry XIII's second wife. Contemporary references about Anne
Boleyn by Catholic sources were very unflattering. On orders of King Henry XIII most all of
portraits and written references to Anne were destroyed after her beheading. Anne's personality
and manners, mostly formed by her time in the French court were considered much too forward
by many of her English contemporaries so what few references to Anne were colored by that
perception. The author seeks to sort out fact from fiction. So the book becomes rather tedious
after a while.

The beginning is good-- my interest was up and on point. Author questions the objectivity surrounding Anne primary resources and explains why people should give Anne the benefit of the doubt instead of automatically chastising Anne Boleyn as a wicked/manipulative woman.

On the other hand, the rest of the book is tedious and very critical. Author is VERY critical of any other work pertaining Anne Boleyn. I wanted to read more about the subject matter and not her personal impressions and assumptions of everyone else(historians, writers, actresses, directors, etc) in the Tudor/Boleyn topic. The author is clearly a Boleyn lover and tries to justify Anne above everything else.

No one interested in a biography of Anne Boleyn should pick up this book. The author has strong positive views about Anne and, as one might expect, praises those who share her views. On the other hand, she heaps scorn on those who do not. Therefore it is no surprise to find that Professor Bordo is primarily interested in points of view and has written a book about how others have seen Anne and how they currently see her. If a reader has no problem with this "the praise the positive, condemn the negative" approach, as the author works her way from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century, the book has some interesting things to say. The reader also needs to have tolerance for a great deal of repetition. The same information, often in the very same words, shows up again and again.

When reading this book, it is necessary to keep in mind that it is a work based entirely on printed sources, interviews (both through e-mail and in person)and material found on the web. This technique leads to some problems.

With respect to the published books and articles on which the author relies, there are some puzzling omissions from the bibliography and notes. While Lacey Baldwin Smith's study of the last years of Henry VIII is cited, his ground-breaking study of Queen Catherine Howard is not. An article by Garret Mattingly makes it into the bibliography, his biography of Catherine of Aragon does not. The most glaring omission is J.J. Scarisbrick's biography of Henry VIII. Scarisbrick spent a lifetime studying Henry, and his book shows it.

When it comes to books not read, perhaps Susan Brigden's Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forrest came out too late for the author to see it. Still, if Professor Bordo had engaged in manuscript research, she too might have made a useful discovery. While the king was still "courting" Anne, Wyatt admitted he had had earlier sexual relations with her. Since Professor Bordo was at some pains to demonstrate that the charges of early promiscuity against Anne are based on hearsay and to paint her as a good girl who didn't do that sort of thing, that discovery might have led to some re-evaluation. I do confess to a certain amount of amusement that the author rejected the idea of an affair between Wyatt and Anne because Wyatt was a married man.

A couple "picky" points will bring this review to an end. In the author's review of attitudes toward Anne and Henry, when she reaches the late seventeenth century, she takes a look at a play called Vertue Betrayed or Anne Bullen by John Banks. In the process of analyzing the play Professor Bordo makes the claim that Banks was the first author to portray Henry VIII as a tyrant and sexual predator. He was not. About a half a century earlier, Sir Robert Naunton wrote that Henry "never spared a man his anger nor a woman his lust." Since Naunton was something short of an opinion innovator, the odds are he was reflecting a commonly held view.

Then we have the question of Anne's reputed third nipple. As with so much information that does not fit Professor Bordo's positive image of Anne, she pours scorn on the whole idea because citizens of early Tudor England used it as evidence of witchcraft. Nonetheless, human females have what is known as a milk line extending down the torso from each breast. It is possible for primitive nipples to develop anywhere along that line. Professor Bordo may be right about Anne having a mole on her torso and not a nipple, but third nipples exist.

Actually, perhaps the points are not that picky,especially with the book's other limitations. If authors without historical or medical training is going to wander into fields other than their own, they do have an obligation to their readers to be sure they thoroughly research their topic and get their facts right.

I wasn't impressed There was too much about how other writers felt about her and went to much into how actors playing her part did other things mentioned were the hair colour was she a blonde was she dark I didn't think that was so important

I just could not get into this book. I found it very dry and not very interesting. I also agree with a previous poster that most of what the author has written is conjecture. I find Anne Boleyn to be a fascinating subject...but not in this case.

I chose this to read due to my fascination with the Tudors. However the references to modern day stories, such as 'Wolf Hall', 'The Tudors', etc. kept me from getting serious about the facts and information the book provided. My general impression was, 'So, what else...'?

The author sets out to find the "real" Anne Boleyn and spends pages and pages critiquing modern authors and movies that she thinks didn't get it right. She inserts her opinions/guesses/back story into a book that is supposed to be a serious look at the Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn marriage then complains when other authors whose works are admittedly fiction "make up history". Then she repeats herself over and over again. If she had stuck to historical facts the book would have been much shorter and easier to read.

By the time I got to page 24, I thought the author was another apologist for Anne Boleyn. By the time I finished the book I felt the same. I sincerely believe that Anne was wrongly accused and executed for the crimes that she was accused of but Susan Bordo paints her as a saint, who for no reason at all her own contemporaries hated or strongly disliked her. Chapuys did not come to the English court until 1529. By then, Anne had already alienated many friends and family who otherwise would have continued to support her due to her arrogance and haughtiness. She claimed to be loyal to her Mistress, Queen Katherine, but her love and loyalty turned to bitter hatred. But her hatred didn't stop there. Princess Mary, who was only 10 years old, wasn't spared cruel treatment either. Susan Bordo blames Chapuys for Annes's reputation but she didn't bother to see what the other foreign ambassadors wrote to their masters in their own countries. She calls out Alison Weir and David Starkey for what she claims is erroneous facts in their books, but they bothered to search and examine contemporary documents to provide the facts they actually saw. She quotes Weir but doesn't finish what Weir was saying, making weir's statement mean something different then what it really is. The same with Dr. Starkey. I've read these two authors many times and if they are not sure about something that was said or written by the people of that time they say so. I do not believe that Anne was quite the villain that has been reported of her, But she. like Bordo, forgot that Henry VIII was the king. I am not defending him either, but ways and thinking back then was quite different then today. Anne wanted to be Queen of England and enjoy whatever benefits [?] came with it. I believe Henry sincerely loved her. Bordo writes as if Anne was a victim of Henry's pursuit, but she was a willing participant. Yes, Henry treated her terribly at the end, but she writes nothing of all the good things he did for her family and especially Anne. Chapuys, who was at the court saw things none of us ever saw and all his words weren't false. Just like the other ambassadors who wrote the same thing. That was missing from this book. There is more misinformation, to much to write here. I read the whole book because I wanted to be fair and not let page 24 make up my mind for me. I feel this is a book written by another feminist apologizing for Anne Boleyn. The best part of this book was a quote from Barb Alexander. I will give this book to my library and will not read it again or the author's other work. Thank you.

Inane! The first quarter of the book focused on whether or not Anne had six fingers on her right hand, three nipples and the color of her hair. After a struggling read, which took me that far, I decided I did not care. Wanted a relevant historical perspective. Probably a good read for those who are already Boleyn fans.

... You will enjoy this book.

I purchased this book this morning and am regretting it already. An hour in, and the only thing I am taking away from the book is Susan Bordo's disdain for other writers.

While accusing the likes of Starkey, Weir, and numerous others of embroidering their books with fictional material, Bordo does just that herself.

I am sure this book has scraps of true history in it, just like most books on the Tudors do, but the difference here is that Bordo spends SO much time trying to tear down other authors works that she seems to have had too little time to compose one of her own.

I do not recommend.

So disappointing! Was very boring and redundant. It could have been about 80% shorter and still covered all the author wanted to say. She talked pages on a paragraph worth of subject matter. There was not anything new or interesting that was not covered in any other book you read or movie you have seen. What a waste of time, I stopped reading it half way through and erased it from my kindle in case I ever think I might want to read it again. What a shame since I am an Anne Boleyn buff!

This did in some way reverse some of the traditional negative opinion of Anne Boleyn, but it was a deceptive book and not entirely worth buying. Barely half of it was to do with her and Henry VIII and the rest was a hash of other authors and ancient historical opinions of whether Anne was really the immoral witch her enemies claimed her to be, or whether they were all lies. The writer lost me when she declared that Rex Harrison played the King in the film "Anne of the Thousand Days", whereas it was RICHARD BURTON. With that glaring error, I ended reading the book without finishing it. If that simple research was beyond the writer, it raised doubts about any of the rest she had in her book.

I put the book down by the 2nd chapter and do not intend to pick it up again. While not telling me anything new about Anne, I understand that much of the history known about her is supposition, I found the author continually bashing other writers hard to swallow. It felt like a diatribe against anyone who has ever written about her in a book or screenplay.

Nothing new to learn and extremely boring when you are reading someone's snarky vent for 2 chapters. I understand disagreeing with another person's point of view, but when every other paragraph seemed to do nothing but point a finger at another author I found it distasteful.

Worst book ever! I couldn't finish this book and I tried twice to read it. This author thinks too highly of herself. She also spends way too much time being snarky and putting down other authors, some that have been writing about Anne Boleyn and Tudor history A LOT longer than she has. She took information from other book that authors put a lot of work into and discredited these authors at every turn. From what I read she never gave any real information to prove her point of disagreement.
Susan insulted the real fans left and right. I got the impression that she thought she was smarter than the rest of us. Her writing style was horrible! She simply spent too much time insulting others then getting to her point.
I've been a Tudor history buff for over 10 years and have read a lot of books; history, biography, and historical fiction alike, but this has to be the worst yet. I get that there will be different opinions with history, because we aren't there and can only rely on what is out there. The author did that then had to add insults!

Don't waste your money buying this book and don't waste your time reading it!

The information shared in this book is interesting. However, I could not get past the repetitive, snarky attacks on other authors and filmmakers who Ms. Bordo felt inaccurately portrayed Anne. She even attacks the ardent fans of a particular author as people who cannot distinguish board game trivia from historical fact. I expected the author to point out how some information about Anne has been created over the years but not the snarky attacks.

Chose this book because I have great interest in Anne Boleyn and the Tudors. This was one of the worst books I have ever read. It covered the same material over and over again. There was no book here. It read like a student trying to write enough pages for a required paper. I would recommend this book to no one.

I had to give this one star just for the fact that this person had the nerve to use their college thesis as a book. BORING.....I thought there might be something different or new information that I might find interesting but no. It reads like a report given at school Lots of footnotes. 40 % of the digital book was footnotes and index. The only thing perhaps that I might have found a little different is the comparison of the different movies and TV shows on Anne Boleyn but even that started to read like a book report. Not even worth the $3.99.

Pompous, dismissive, arrogant. Dismisses historical clues (written by people who were actually there, albeit with their own biases of which an intelligent reader can surmise) as not reliable. We are to dismiss the only clues we have from the people who were actually there because she thinks we are not smart enough to figure out that the Spanish Ambassador disliked Anne Boleyn? No thank you.

This book is a must read for any Tudor fan. I've been studying the Tudors for about 16 years now and while nothing inherently "new" is presented in Bordo's research, she offers a wonderful perspective on how the historical record and historical fiction has brought us to the Anne we know (or think we know) today.

I do have some reservations about the way she goes after historians such as Alison Weir and David Starkey, but then on at least one occasion used Weir to support her own argument. I take issue with some if her generalizations, like the "fact" young women today are so interested in Anne because of Showtime's The Tudors. I may be more sensitive to these claims because I'm within the age range she studied (25), but I'd formed my own opinions about Anne well before The Tudors was conceived as a show--and probably even before I studied English (particularly Elizabethan Literature) in college.

Despite its imperfections, however, this is an entertaining book to read and it's apparent that it was exhaustively researched. Bordo has crafted a truly wonderful bridge between what remains of Anne's life, and how she continues to live in modern society. She presents a compelling argument for why others saw Anne the way they did, why there is such a divide in the way she is portrayed, and how that has evolved over time. The one thing I really wish she had given me more of was a look into the psychology of the relationship between Henry VIII and Anne. There were some allusions to this in the intro, and she certainly did touch on it, just not as much as I'd hoped. Overall, a great book with a fresh perspective that turned out to be a quick and enjoyable read for me. If you're thinking about picking it up, do it!

I was looking forward to a good story with interesting history included. Unfortunately, this was more like a history textbook with too much detail. My interest is up now and I will look for a better story.

How do you review a book you wish you could've written? The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo is an intelligent and thought provoking read. This book is about the cultural impact of Anne Boleyn, not a book on Tudor History. How has Anne Boleyn captivated people for over 500 years? What is truth? What is legend and how much is 'what if' and 'make believe'? We have to remember that Anne Boleyn was married to Henry VIII, a man so powerful that we do not even know her birth date to this day. He wanted every trace of her removed from history. Instead, he only added to the myths that seem to appear daily.

Bordo takes the top historians to task. Throughout the last five centuries, historians have written as if they have insight into the thoughts and motivations of their subject. Boleyn is a classic study in Warhol's 'enigmatic blankness'. People tend to project their own ideas and belief system into the Boleyn myth. Bordo's basic underlying tenet is simply...we don't know. But, what if Boleyn was just a girl who, even though she was not a beauty by the standards of her time, what if she was a girl who was happy with herself and loved the very things that made her different? Is it possible that by simply being happy with herself she was able to capture the heart of a king, change history and keep us intrigued into the 21st century? This seems to me to be the best theory I have ever read. (As I see it, in Henry's world of the usual and the expected in everything, Anne gave him laughter, flirtatiousness and nothing he had ever experienced. What man wouldn't be smitten?)

There are parts of the book I enjoyed better than others, like anyone will do. I found no blatant historical inaccuracies. Bordo points out the difference between Catholic writers and Protestant writers, which I feel most Americans tend to over look. Bordo gives the biases on each side. However, the interview segment with Natalie Dormer is extremely impressive to me. Ms. Dormer, a former student of history, was adamant that Anne Boleyn be presented in The Tudors as smart, sexy and intelligent. "Anne was that rare phenomenon, a self made woman. But then, this became her demise."

This is just the start. A book could be written about why The Creation of Anne Boleyn is so important. It is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read in my life, not just one of the best books I have ever read about Anne Boleyn. I thank Susan Bordo for her combination of intellect and writing style, which make this book so impressive on so many levels. This book must have five stars although it should be given at least ten stars, minimum. I highly recommend it.

I didn't dislike this book, but I am not sure that it was exactly what I had hoped for either. As much as Ms. Bordo talks about the biases which others have put on Anne I think she has one herself. The book was divided into 3 parts, the first of which is basically what is and isn't historically supported of what we "know" of Anne. I enjoyed this section a lot. Her problems with Phillipa Gregory are ones I have thought less articulately myself. The next two run together in my mind but talk about trends and ways Anne is portrayed. This is where I get off the train. While much of the detail in these chapters was interesting and unfamiliar to me it all read like there was a 'truth' I was supposed to be finding: mainly that if you dislike Anne you are either anti gender equality or Catholic (and maybe that is the same thing to the author). It was worth reading for the detail and the treatment in the first third, but definite agenda that was a bit muddied in the anti bias of others story line.

I was disappointed in this book. Basically it was a critique of actors playing the role of Anne Boylen. And how the writers took liberties of historic contents. Of which was known at the time. I did not learn anything new about Anne Boylen.

If there is any Queen that has been most speculated about, then according to me that would have to be Anne Boleyn. There has been so much written and spoken about her. What was she? Was she really that vicious? Or was she merely misunderstood? What was her nature? We all know (or well most of us do) how she came to be the Queen of England and Henry VIII's second wife. She was a mistress, a plotter, a woman who was in charge and wanted it all and like I mentioned may be a lot of the parts she must have been highly misunderstood.

I have always been drawn to Anne Boleyn, wanting to know what led to her execution. Did she even deserve it all? There are so many questions surrounding her that it would probably take a lot of books for me to read and movies to watch to get a sense of the person. However, for now I have just finished reading a book by Susan Bordo called, "The Creation of Anne Boleyn", where she uncovers the persona, the myths in a logical manner about this Queen and her life.

"The Creation of Anne Boleyn" charts the entire life of Anne Boleyn and with it Bordo also talks about the influence of every single form of media that has led to people perceiving Anne the way they do. To make her point, Bordo breaks all myths and conventions with more than enough proof and that had me going page after page. The structure of the book is also simple and quite understandable: the first part speaks of Anne and how she came to be Queen, the second part takes readers through what happened after Anne's death and the third part is all about the media and how it has come to view Anne Boleyn.

The writing is insightful and shows the research gone into this book. I loved the instances and reasoning provided by Bordo. She takes readers on a fascinating journey of trying to uncover the mystery behind Anne Boleyn and her ambitions. It is a cultural examination which is highly readable and also witty in most places, which is very difficult for a non-fiction or a book of a historical context to achieve. She speaks of Anne as a person - physically and mentally and that clarity is par excellence. At the same time, Bordo takes into account what happened and why. She talks of roles of other members of the King's court and their role in it. Katherine of Aragon is heavily featured, considering it was she that Henry wanted a divorce from to marry Anne and he waited the longest for it, only to end up executing Anne. This irony and complexity is simply told in this book. For anyone who wants to know more about Anne and the myths surrounding her life, I definitely recommend this one.

I was disappointed in this book. If I wanted to read speculation, I would have chosen a fiction book. There is little meat in this story. Where does Susan Bordo get her information from? I didn't want to read fictional accounts about Anne Boleyn, I was looking for HARD FACTS about her. There is too much in this book about what authors THOUGHT about her, what is written about her in movies and other books. I did not want to read that.

I wanted facts about her. There is NO evidence anywhere she ever had a sixth finger. I have seen pictures of her at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and there is no evidence of a sixth finger. That is pure speculation. All the women wore long necked gowns, that was common in those days, that does not support the "fact" that she had a wen. Again, all this material is based on speculation. What proof or facts are actually in existence that someone could write a reliable book about Anne Boleyn? Most of the letters she wrote to the King were destroyed. Or so I have read. So again, I am disappointed in this book.

Whether you believe Anne Boleyn was the tragic pawn of powerful and ruthless men or a manipulative whore that stole a crown and spent her days scheming to murder her enemies, or something in between, you have to admit that Anne Boleyn was fascinating. Susan Bordo's "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" discusses how Anne has been portrayed in both fiction and non-fiction, TV, movies, and documentaries and how that has changed over time. I thoroughly enjoyed the way the author explored and compared the many versions of Anne's life and character throughout history and how each portrayal of Anne was adapted to fit in with the era in which it was written. It's easy to see how the "true" Anne Boleyn could be lost somewhere in history. It makes me hate Henry all the more for all that he did to remove any mention of her so that now, we're left with mostly conjecture about who she really was. Of course, that may be the very thing that causes me to be so drawn to her above many other dynamic women in history. I admit, I haven't watched many of the movies and documentaries mentioned but there are several that I am eager to see after reading this book.

Bordo is very opinionated about the way she believes many popular authors have unfairly characterized Anne. From the beginning, this approach was very off-putting for me since my introduction to Anne Boleyn was from authors such as Alison Weir, Norah Lofts, and Jean Plaidy and I was almost offended at, what I felt, was Bordo practically accusing them of fabricating history (as far as Weir and Lofts, not much is said about Plaidy). As you see by my 4 star rating, I ended up finding this to be an excellent read, and I may have even rated it a 5 had she not been so harsh on Alison Weir. I am much more inclined to see Anne Boleyn much the way Bordo does, as an intelligent, charismatic, and complex woman as opposed to the sly temptress that she is so widely believed to be. However, I think that, with the lack of information available about Anne Boleyn and since the information that is available cannot necessarily be taken at face value, Alison Weir's interpretation of historical events and Anne's character is just as likely as Bordo's interpretation.

I found "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" to be thought-provoking and it definitely motivated me to revisit some of my favorite Tudor reads and led me to discover some books and movies I wasn't familiar with. I appreciated that there were many points of view discussed and compared even though there was a clear bias. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is curious about Anne Boleyn because it does present so many differing points of view as well as the author's own opinion about Anne's character and why she has been portrayed so many ways.

This book presents the research and thinking of Susan Bordo on how Anne Boleyn has been portrayed in her time through ours.

Boleyn's portrayal was biased from the start due to the motives of those providing primary sources and the power and censorship of Henry VIII. Eustache Chapuys, the most prolific and quoted (even today) Boleyn contemporary, was the representative of Charles V (Catherine's nephew), and politically tied to the Catholic cause. Besides his career concerns, Chapuys buys into the conventional wisdom of the time, that women were either saints (like Catherine) or whores (like Anne).

Bordo also shows the unreliability of modern scholars and interpreters who keep negative myths alive. One good example of the image of Anne's sixth finger. Despite the flimsy basis for it, it appears in not just fiction, but in non-fiction where it appears again and again as a fact and in art. More harmful, though, are the false accounts (many from Chapuys) of Anne's ambitions to be queen through Henry and plots to kill Catherine and Mary.

As a champion for Anne, Bordo posits that Anne was just not keeping Henry at bay for 6 years as a strategy, Henry had an interest in it too, since his goal was a legitimate heir. The myth of Anne as a potential murderer eclipses the reality that Henry IS a murderer. As a young man he had executed his father's two loyal tax collectors, and later, two wives, his mentor Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell and many others both close to unknown to him.

More than half the book covers the modern media treatments of Anne Boleyn. A whole chapter deals with the differing play and movie presentations of "Anne of One Thousand Days" and how they fit with Anne's portrayals in this period. A chapter on the popular Showtime series "The Tudors" has interviews with Natalie Dormer (who played Anne) and the writer Michael Hirst. Significant here, is how Dormer was influential in changing the Season 2 portrayal of Anne, infusing more of the woman's point of view into the character. The Chapter covering "The Other Boleyn Girl", called "Chapuy's Revenge", covers its many errors and how they plant the negative stereotypes of Anne into the minds of viewers unfamiliar with the real facts of history. There is a chapter devoted to blogs and web sites.

I liked that the author brought her personal experiences into the narrative, one notable example is how successful Henry has been in purging the record of Anne. The tourist will see very little of her in historic sites in Britain, and even the staff of the museum holding her portrait is unaware of its whereabouts.

Recommended for Tudor readers.

I must confess that I was going to give this book four stars because the author expounded way too much on feminism for my taste. I believe in women's rights and equality, but personally there are some aspects of the feminist movement that to me have done more harm than good. But then I realized that the book should be rated on its own merits, not my personal feelings. No better analysis of the portrayal of Anne Boleyn in histories, stage, film and TV can be imagined. For that alone, this deserves five stars.

And when it comes to dissecting Anne-her image, downfall and later treatment by posterity-this tome excels. It is essentially divided into two parts--the first dealing with the image of Anne as seen by her contemporaries (mostly hostile), her downfall and subsequent execution. It was difficult to admit that my own opinions of her were based on erroneous assumptions and downright lies, especially by Chapuys. Unfortunately, most historians have relied on his very biased accounts. Thanks to the author, my eyes have been opened to a new Anne-one that I never imagined. To understand that we still don't even know her true looks, including whether or not she possessed that famous head of copious black hair, was a real wake up call.

But it is the second part of the book that truly shines. It pleased me to know that I share Susan Bordo's love of Anne of the Thousand Days. Genevieve Bujold's portrayal captured my heart, although Richard Burton was quite the "downer" for me as Henry. As a historian, I was appalled by "The Tudors" series, but liked Natalie Dormer as Anne. Now I know why. Ms. Dormer, a fellow lover of Tudor history, did much to try and keep the series on track (though in the end, she only partially succeeded). Her execution scene is by far the best that has been shown on screen and TV. Thank you, Natalie, for your splendid performance and immersion into the character of Anne.

Finally, Ms. Bordo asked a question that had never crossed my mind--Why Anne? Indeed. She was not a raving beauty, she was intelligent and spoke her mind when it was not fashionable for women to do so, and she refused to play the role of silent and obedient queen and wife (think Jane Seymour). That magical quality that kept Henry yearning after her for six years still eludes us. And that is why, love or hate her, Anne Boleyn remains such an attraction to this day. She is truly a "mystery woman" who refuses to be ousted from her well deserved place in history.

The premise of this book - the way Anne Boleyn has been viewed across the centuries - is promising. But the execution is not very successful and the book turned out to be mostly an examination of the way Henry VIII's doomed second wife has been treated by movies, plays, novels and TV in the past few years.

The first part of the book, reviewing her actual life, is a handy compendium of known sources adding up to a fairly rounded picture. I was impressed and moved by Anne's speech at her trial, which she may have actually delivered, the author asserts. But then we mostly skip the subsequent centuries before landing in the latter part of the 20th century. There are, it's true, a few brief references to Anne through the ages. In general, Anne was viewed negatively by Catholics and more positively by Protestants. Henry too has suffered historical reassessment. Dickens viewed him as a pig and a bully.

The discussion of movies and novels of more recent vintage turns on which ones the author likes and which she dislikes. She loves "Anne of a Thousand Days" and the performance of Genevieve Bujold (whom she tracked down for a fairly meaningless interview). She hates "The Other Boleyn Girl" -- because it makes Anne out to be a villain.

The author just looooves Natalie Dormer who played Anne in the Showtime series "The Tudors" which made the court of Henry VIII into a sex-drenched bacchanal. We get another fan interview with Dormer about her emotions while being beheaded.

This is all absurd. It's ridiculous to demolish Philippa Gregory's bodice ripper while praising Showtime's bodice ripper just because the author happens to sympathize with the depiction of Anne in the latter and not the former. Both are full of historical inaccuracies. The author claims that Natalie Dormer comes close to the essence of Anne than does Natalie Portman - but that's just her projection. She provides a list of historical blunders in "The Other Boleyn Girl" but not for "the Tudors" or for "Anne of the Thousand Days" even as she acknowledges that Anne's climactic speech to Henry in that movie could never have happened. She also cuts Hilary Mantel some slack for her historical inaccuracies because "Wolf Hall" is well written, even though the author carefully decided which historical facts to include, which to leave out and what to invent.

The most interesting question that emerges from this is, how close to real events must historical fiction be, whether on the page or on the screen? What does the term "historical fiction" actually mean? Every generation reinterprets historical events in the light of its own understanding and prevailing social norms. People commonly examine biblical stories as if the characters were living in downtown LA in the year 2014 and believed all the things that we believe. Eventually, history as written by novelists, turns into myth, which is what has happened with the Tudors.

In this book, we also get a bunch of extraneous material about the author's own life -- how she was hit by a bike in England, what her daughters think about feminism and Anne -- and we get the informed comments of bloggers and contributors to Anne fan pages on the Internet which illuminates how ordinary people create their own versions of Anne.

This is all wrapped up in scores of pages of footnotes to give it a veneer of academic respectability. But really it's not much more than a discussion of some popular entertainment in light of the author's own feminist sensibility.

I really like history books, but most of them are too stuck up to tolerate. I’m not a scholar, and I don’t think scholarly work should be barred from me just because I haven’t spent years in study. At the same time, I don’t want things dumbed down to me. Finding that balance can be hard for writers of ‘pop’ history-- which invariably just means any history book you’re unlikely to find in a classroom—either you suggest your readers are idiots, or you make a book too dryly analytical for the casual reader to understand.

No, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a casual interest in history, or not having a PHD.

This book is for casually interested, and the PHDless. This isn’t an insult coming from me! It’s a compliment! I wish more books were written like this! I wish more books had the guts to be humble, admit their biases, and look to modern culture as well as past history. I wish more books were interested in talking about the evolution of historical figures. I wish more books were interested in, quite frankly, telling the whole story, not just of the historical figure but of the figure’s history.

This book isn’t perfect. It loses steam after Anne dies (who doesn’t?) and some of its pop-cultural observations are a little pithy or airy. But I’d rather have those than a book that ignores them entirely. This book is trying new and interesting things, and seriously interrogating the culture that springs up around history fans in a lively and engaging manner.

Susan Bordo can write. You would think that would stand out less when reviewing a book, but not in the history category, chock-full of dry, lifeless tomes. This book is a godsend, I highly recommend it. Even if you don’t usually find Tudor history interesting (I sure don’t), give this one a spin. You may be surprised. At the very least, you’ll be entertained, which is, also, a compliment.

Think you know everything there is to know about Anne Boleyn? Susan Bordo is here to tell you differently. The concrete information about Anne (her appearance, her words, her goals and dreams, her personality, her religious faith) has been lost to time - largely erased by her vengeful husband Henry VIII and other numerous enemies to eliminate her from the record. So why do you think you know so much about Anne? Because Bordo shows that our ideas, the very facts, you and I think we know about Anne are predominantly the constructs of others, many of whom had an ax to grind with the former queen.

Bordo does a phenomenal job highlighting the inconsistencies in the various descriptions of Anne we have come to rely upon (Was she really dark haired? Was she extraordinarily ruthless? Did she really have six fingers? Did she really sleep with her brother?), some of which have been irresponsibly perpetuated by well-regarded historical scholars. Some accusations are fantastic: Anne had witches' marks (moles) all over her body, she had a goiter, she had an enormous wart on her face. Others are equally fanciful if a bit more subtle and harder to disprove: she ensnared Henry by witchcraft, she was the predominant force for Protestantism in the country, she encouraged Henry to horribly mistreat his daughter Mary.

Most of Anne's story has never been hers at all - she was never allowed to tell it. Instead, we have the records written by her sworn enemies, Eustace Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador and devoted supporter of Catherine of Aragon, for one. Bordo explains that many, both professional and amateur alike, have fallen prey to the irresistible myth of Anne as seductress, vixen, manipulator, and power-hungry witch. But do those stories represent any fact whatsoever? Or were they rather the machinations of Anne's contemporary Catholic enemies, influential people who would stop at nothing to keep her from rising to power? Bordo argues that Anne was probably guilty of no greater sins than being a strong-willed, well-educated, Protestant, Francophile who took a great risk by stepping beyond the strictly established bounds for a woman and a wife. In fact, Bardo points out that at her trial, Anne denies the accusations of adultery and treason and instead says that (paraphrasing) she was guilty of "lacking humility" when it came to her husband, admitting only to the sin of overstepping her wifely bounds and not the other sins heaped upon her by others.

Anne's more modern biographers have not always been so kind or concerned about fact either. Let's face it. Sex and intrigue sell, so as Bordo points out, even modern tv shows like "The Tudors" heavily promote the image of Anne (as played by Natalie Dormer) as the raven-haired vixen who lured Henry into her bed and manipulated him for her own ends. So even modern observers have fallen prey to highly fictional portrayals of Anne's life that have been taken as fact. Sadly, these myths have been perpetuated for so long that fantasy becomes reality.

Bordo's book is absolutely fascinating. She points out how it is truly impossible to know much specific about Anne at all. Her portraits were burned, her letters destroyed, and her history manipulated by outsiders with their own agendas. Unless some remarkable artifact is uncovered in the future, Anne's story will remain mysterious and her commentators past and present will hold more sway over her image than she herself did. I for one have always been interested in history's perception of historical women, and Anne is no exception. The fact that many tried to co-opt Anne's legacy for their own reasons shows how sad but how often it is that a historical woman has no say whatsoever in her own tale.

Bordo uses investigative research to smash our preconceived notions and hold up a mirror to history's prejudices. She leaves us not so much with a clearer picture of Anne than a clearer picture of ourselves, as ones with a tendency to rush to judgement and a readiness to fall for the juiciest tale, whether substantiated or not. This is a real treat for those interested in "the truth" in historical research and how cultural psychology can bend and sway that "truth" over the years. Highly recommended!

-Rebecca Henderson Palmer

I love books that are just as much historiography as history; sometimes it can be just as interesting to dissect the "known" story and how it came to be as telling the story itself. This may seem an odd preference from a blogger of historical fiction but it's actually what a lot of good historical fiction does. It removes the stereotypes, the images from movies and TV and (yes) the bad historical novels. It reminds you that these characters didn't always exist in books - they were real people. This can be surprisingly hard to remember when you've read a dozen novels about Henry VIII.

I've been reading about Anne Boleyn for two decades now and thought that I couldn't possibly come across a book that would make me consider her in a new way. Susan Bordo's Boleyn did the impossible - it made me excited to read about the Tudors again while reminding me to approach history and historical fiction with curiosity and a questioning mind.

Boleyn is divided into three parts: the first part is a kind of mini-biography of Boleyn but with the very clear purpose of examining the known sources on her life and evaluating their veracity. The fascinating final chapter in the section asks "Henry: How Could He Do It?" This is the first biography of Anne (at least that I can remember) that asks such a question and doesn't treat her death on the scaffold as the inevitable end point of her life.

The second part looks at how Anne's death laid the groundwork for subsequent centuries' making and re-making of her image. It's incredible to see how many different faces the historical Anne acquired in the progression towards the present day. The third part is a treat for historical fiction fans, looking at the last fifty years of portrayals of Anne, from the well-meaning historical inaccuracies of Anne of a Thousand Days to the travesty of The Other Boleyn Girl. Bordo's interview with actress Natalie Dormer actually made me appreciate Showtime's The Tudors in a new way.

I have only one small problem with this book and that's the strange pseudo-computer generated cover. The book deserves much better and I hope it won't dissuade readers from picking it up.

Readers looking for similar books can try out A Magnificent Obsession; Queen of Fashion and The Resurrection of the Romanovs. All three books in varying ways either challenge the history we thought we knew about famous figures such as Queen Victoria, Marie Antionette and Grand Duchess Anastasia or present one aspect of their life in such a new way, it makes us reconsider their entire lives from a new perspective.

Bordo's book has every right to stand amongst these finely written works of history and I hope every historical fiction fan has an opportunity to read her work.

Who could have guessed that the Tudors would become the rock stars of the new millennium? Surely not anyone who had to sit through the history of Henry VIII in high school. Heaven knows my teacher managed to turn even sex and death into a boring monologue of facts devoid of life. So, now with the movies and a certain TV show making millions tune in and turn on to 400 year old British history, what's not to like?

Well, actually, the twisting of facts and the use of unproven rumors and legends tend to make the heads of many historians spin, and mutterings can be heard across the land. Assuming you happen to live within muttering distance of any historians.

This book is a great read for people who know the basic history of the Tudors, mainly the history of King Henry VII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, and want to dig a little deeper into the real story behind some of the most popular legends of the story. And there are plenty. Six fingers? Dark hair, or brunette? Witchcraft? The author goes back to the original sources of some of these legends hoping to winnow out supportable facts from the rumors. But the real fact is, it's hard to prove anything hundreds of years later, especially when so many members of the court in question held Boleyn in such contempt, through their own prejudices or the time honored tradition of taking sides. Not to mention, being on Boleyn's side could have been hazardous to your health with a monarch who thought nothing of sending those who opposed him to their deaths with little reflection or remorse. The first part of the book goes over the basics of Boleyn's life from her appearance at court until her final moments, and the aftermath of her beheading.

The second part of the book deals with the legend of Anne Boleyn in books, movies, and television. Susan Bordo delves into how close to the mark the depictions come and which ones fall far short of the facts. She has interviewed several writers and actors who have brought Boleyn to life on the large and small screen trying to get to the heart of their portrayals and what the part meant to them. Bordo also goes into detail about which historical novel authors followed the facts and which ones chose to turn the story to fit their own ideas or prejudices. I don't think she's going to be having tea with some of these authors, but it makes for compelling reading.

The last portion of the book takes an in depth look at the mystique of Boleyn and what she represents to history buffs and Tudorphiles now. The author is unabashed in her admiration of Boleyn, seeing her as a post feminist icon, (what is post feminism anyway?) who can and should be an inspiration for women in this day and age as a strong and intelligent woman who stood up for her principles and always led her life on her own terms. I guess it could be said she was more proactive than reactive, but still, there was the whole beheading thing.

This is a good new look at a notorious family, educational and entertaining.

I've been an Anne Boleyn fan for well over 10 years and I am just one of thousands (if not millions). I enjoy both the actual history and the numerous versions of her in fiction and theater/film. I highly recommend this book to Anne lovers, both new and old.

Over the years, I have learned that Anne is many things to many people and, much like characters from the Bible, every person seems to prefer their own interpretation. The author understands and appreciates the wildly different narratives that exist about this one woman. In this book, the author explores how Anne Boleyn became "Anne Boleyn", how different versions of her developed, why they persist, and how or if it lines up with what we know of the actual lived truth.

I admit that I am a little...okay, a LOT biased against exploring the more incendiary versions of Anne Boleyn (I'm looking at you, P. Gregory). However, Ms. Bordo's manifest respect and affection for Anne provides reluctant explorers like myself, a sense of trust. I still wholly reject their versions, but thanks to this book I understand a little better how the stories were born and why they continue.

This book doesn't have all the answers, but I love that it challenges me to explore all the right questions: Is my "Anne Boleyn" more history or more narrative? What about yours? What is true? What is not? What parts have been lost forever? Which facts have been hewed by time or culture? Should they still be considered facts? And who decides?

Overall, "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" is a fascinating, insightful, well researched, and enjoyable read. I have an entire shelf of books about Anne Boleyn but none of them are like this one. If you want the complete history, read Mr. Ives. If you want insight into the enigma, read Ms. Bordo.

On a personal note: I love Anne Boleyn, not as a martyr or a whore or even as a queen. I love Anne Boleyn because she was human, made up of muscle, tendon, bone, and blood and therefore connected to me the same way all of mankind is connected to each other.

But most of all, I love Anne for her humanity. She was strong, loving, ambitious, witty, and intelligent. So am I... sometimes. She was also proud, unyielding, devious, and her rapier wit too often cut too deeply. My own character flaws and hers align much more often than I would like to admit.

I find myself in the bits of Anne's history. I suppose "Anne Boleyn" will live on because people will continue to find her and maybe find a bit of themselves...

I wanted to like this more than I did. Bordo is splendid in her critique of the "received" history of Anne Boleyn, pointing out the pernicious tendency of even objective historians to color the tale with their own prejudices. It was fascinating to trace the historical evolution of Anne's image, from scheming sex crazed heretic, to soulful Reformation martyr, to Victorian victim, to power feminist. Bordo's interviews with two of the most influential Anne interpreters: Genevieve Bujold and Natalie Dormer, illuminate the interplay of sexism, commerce, and wish fulfillment in each generation's re-imagining of Anne's character.

So far, so good. However, when Bordo attempts to psychoanalyze the 400 years dead Henry, (Did a childhood dominated by strong female figures, but with unrealistic expectations of autocratic masculinity result in borderline personality disorder? Discuss....) she wanders into shakier territory. When she attempts to conflate her own, very 20th century sexual misfires and 60s radical follies with the enormity of Tudor sexual politics, she sinks into glurge of Oprah-esque proportions. Ultimately, Bordo is guilty of the same misprision as the writers she critiques, namely reinterpreting a complex, multidimensional tragedy in light of her own limited experience.

I absolutely love the concept of this book, and I was excited that someone had attempted to sort out fact from fiction regarding a historical figure that I have admired for a long time. The first two-thirds of the book had me thoroughly engrossed and even made me re-evaluate everything I "know" about history in general. It was also fascinating to see the way that Anne's image has changed throughout the last few centuries, which was something I had never really given much thought to before now.

However, the latter part of the book felt disjointed and over-the-top to me. While I understand that feminism has very much influenced the way we see Anne Boleyn today, the author was very heavy-handed with her own personal views-- to the point where it felt more like sitting through a lecture and less like having a thoughtful discussion. Although her passion for the issue is clear, at times it felt like she became so carried away with her own crusade that Anne ended up being simply a mascot.

As Bordo tells us, innumerable people have shaped and molded Anne throughout history into the woman they WANTED her to be, rather than the woman she really was. Bordo seems to discourage this kind of revisionist history and character manipulation only to blatantly do the same thing herself. Even though the author claims that we can really only speculate as to Anne's true motivations and personal feelings, she seems to reach a conclusion through a great deal of speculation of her own. All other views that do not mesh with hers are derided. Obviously, I was disappointed overall and felt that this could have been handled in a much better way.

Sidenote: At one point Anne is referenced as the 'original feminist'(though I can't remember whether those were the author's words or one of the countless quotes she included to make up much of the last chapter), which I find entirely absurd and somewhat sad, considering the many, many amazing women throughout history that are far less known, just as interesting, and possibly even more inspirational than Anne Boleyn. I don't deny Anne her place among those women, but I certainly can't credit her with being the 'first and foremost'. As a lover of history, especially the stories of women in British history, I would encourage the author to expand her interest a little more. I think she would be pleasantly surprised.

While I found this a worthwhile read, especially the life of Anne in Part 1, as seen from the perspectives of her contemporaries, it's not really a book for general readers in so far as it actually is about history. It presupposes a fair knowledge of early 16th century history, and particularly Tudor history. Henry's grandmother is referred to a couple of times, but never named or even identified as his maternal or paternal grandmother. It would have been his paternal grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, a formidable woman in her own right, as is hinted in the book. That Henry was a second son and that Catherine of Aragon was married to his older brother, Arthur, is referred to only in passing. Why Henry considered himself not legitimately married to Catherine never comes up (that marrying his sister-in-law was a sort of incest, although a papal dispensation at the time of the marriage was granted on the grounds that Catherine and Arthur's marriage was never consummated, the grounds for his own annulment of his marriage to Ann of Cleves.) That Catherine of Aragon is a relation of Emperor Charles the Fifth, the Holy Roman Emperor, is mentioned, but never the actual degree of relationship. He was her nephew. Though Spain is always mentioned, he was merely regent in Spain for his mentally ill mother, Catherine's sister, Juana. That he controlled much of Italy doesn't come up, but that is at least a sufficient reason for the Pope's refusal to grant the annulment. A nearby imperial army is a persuasive argument. Yet this is all background to Anne's historical importance. The book focuses largely on Anne's character, which is interesting. The author seems largely to want to hold Anne up as a model for the modern girl. She is seen as intelligent and an independent thinker. That she was sympathetic to the reformist view in religion, although she would probably not have thought of herself as Protestant, is an indication of this. That she actively disagreed with Cromwell over the disposition of the treasuries of the dissolved monasteries suggests her independence of mind and, possibly a political naiveté in not seeing that his goal was pleasing the nobility and keeping them on Henry's side in a difficult time. She also doesn't seem to have realized what a mistake it was to tangle with someone so ruthlessly devoted to his own self interest, something else hinted at, but not spelled out. She was not the first Queen of England to indulge in Court politics. Eleanor of Aquitaine did almost four centuries before Anne, as also hinted, encouraging her sons in their rebellion against their father but holding onto to her head to outlive her husband and see two of her sons (Richard the Lion Hearted and the hapless John) succeed to the throne. Anne's unique quality among a fair number of intelligent and politically involved English queens is that she lost her head and that was for dynastic reasons not her character. Even her contemporary detractors seem unconvinced that she was guilty of the crimes attributed to her and concede that she went to her death with great courage. I agree with the author that most 21st century views of Anne, and the Tudors in general, have little respect for historical fact, yet the young women whose blog comments she cites approvingly at the end of her book seem completely clueless about the history. One describes Anne as a 15th century figure, apparently unaware that the 1500s were the 16th century. They apply modern views of sexual relationships to her, absolving her from the label of licentiousness because they don't know what it means. That religion was very important to her is irrelevant to them, although the author understands this quite well. They think she would have read Vogue, yet claim to admire her intellect and independence. God help us! I think she would have read the Economist and the New York Review of Books. I personally would have enjoyed an expansion of the historical account, which was quite good, and could have skipped the last couple of sections.

Anne Boleyn has been an enduring figure for more than five hundred years, capturing the interest and imagination of numerous generations. In Susan Bordo's novel, we find not only a factual biography of Anne's life, but a honest look at the historical sources that give us our knowledge of Anne. It attempts to penetrate the haze of the mythos built around this fallen to queen to show us the truth behind those who, during her life, both supported and reviled her. We are also taken on the journey of Anne's life after death, through the many masks her ghost wears as incarnation of each generation's ideology of her is reshaped and changed. Anne "The Concubine" of Chapuys, the reformist and a driving force behind the Anglican Schism, the ingenue of the Victorian era, the free-spirited feminist born into a confining and inhospitable era, Anne the manipulative and cunning bitch; all of these ideals are represented within, a look into how Anne changes and morphs to, in many ways, reflect the current modern views of women who step out of the bounds of what is prescribed, and is either idolized or hated for it.

This book is well written, engaging, and so incredibly interesting that I was knocking into walls, as I refused to put it down and actually look at where I was going. It is poignant, inflaming, haunting, and somehow peaceful...Henry may have done his best to remove the "blight" of Anne Boleyn from his record, but she endures, a chameleon that even surpasses the mass and girth that Bluff King Hal takes in the imagination of modern. Susan Bordo took on an intimidating challenge, confronting the different faces of and theorized motivations of Anne, but she rose to it beautifully. The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a must read for any and all who enjoy Tudor history, daring us all to break down the walls of the fictional Anne we are given in novels and movies and plays, and to find the hints of the actual Anne that was human; neither good nor evil, but the gray in-between that represents any human who makes choices both right and wrong.

With the possible exception of her daughter, Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn is the most well-known and notorious of England's queens. She captured the heart of a king, but refused to become his mistress. His quest to divorce his wife and marry Anne was the great scandal of the day and led to the establishment of the Church of England. But once he had Anne, he quickly tired of her - and after three years of marriage, Anne's head was chopped off by an executioner. Susan Bordo writes not a biography of the famous queen - for there are many of them already - but a cultural history of Anne Boleyn. She questions the reliability of early documents about Anne Boleyn, written by men wishing to discredit her. She shows that Anne's role in society has shifted time and again, from a Protestant whore to a virtuous martyr, from a proto-feminist to the puppet controlled by powerful relatives. Bordo also looks at many 20th and 21st century depictions of Anne in literature and film, revealing how the Zeitgeist of the day altered Anne's role in everything from Anne of the Thousand Days to The Tudors.

Susan Bordo might be Anne's biggest fan, eager to rehabilitate her. As she makes her way through a brief biographical sketch of the queen, she rejects many of the "documentary truths" gleaned from the letters of Eustance Chapuys, a diplomat for the Holy Roman Emperor who befriended Catherine of Aragon, that have long been considered primary sources about Anne Boleyn. Bordo argues that Chapuys' observations cannot be trusted, since Anne was naturally the enemy of a representative of Spanish interests. I had not realized how dependent our knowledge of Anne Boleyn is on Chapuys' letters until Bordo began dismissing his claims; many of the nastiest gossip and worst rumors about Anne have no source other than his letters. The result is a vague outline of Anne Boleyn - for while Bordo enthusiastically eliminates sources, she has nothing new with which to replace them.

The second half of the book is far more interesting than the first, in my opinion. When Bordo dives into cultural history, she shines. It becomes clear that Anne Boleyn becomes a mirror to reflect the outside world, and rarely are there serious attempts at portraying her accurately. In 19th century historical paintings, she is blonde and voluptuous - the Victorian standard of beauty, to be sure, but nothing at all like the appearance of the historical Anne as described by her contemporaries. (Catherine of Aragon, Anne's great rival, suffers similarly - although she is nearly always depicted as dark-haired, she actually had reddish-gold colored hair.) She has been the tragic star of epic romances and a selfish, vain queen destroyed by her own ambition. Best of all, Susan Bordo's book is quite up-to-date, and her praise of The Tudors and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall: A Novel and criticism of The Other Boleyn Girl is a must-read for fans of Tudor fiction.

I really enjoyed this book because it so clearly illustrates the difference between a historical person and the "idea" of that person. It happens again and again - just think of the difference between Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra and her historical counterpart, or the constant evolution of how Jesus Christ has been portrayed over the centuries. Since I'm a huge Tudor fan, I've seen and/or read most of the media Bordo mentions, but I would think of all these Anne Boleyns as "The Tudors Anne" or "Philippa Gregory's Anne". I never thought about what all these Annes reflect about the readers/watchers of the 21st century, but now I'll never be able to read a book or watch a movie with her in it the same way again.

I read just about every Anne Boleyn book I can get my hands on, but I admit it gets pretty repetitive -- all these examinations of one woman's life. But this isn't "just another Anne Boleyn biography." In addition to the "biography" part (which provides some insights and perspectives I hadn't seen before), the author studies the various ways Anne Boleyn has been portrayed in popular culture, from the earliest novels about her to the modern soap opera The Tudors. (I confessed I never got past Episode 1, which depicted like five sex acts in the first fifteen minutes. Maybe I'll give it another go.)

Also notable is Bordo's undisguised, unapologetic hostility towards certain people, both historians like David Starkey and fiction writers like Philippa Gregory, who she thinks over-dramatize Anne's life and make all kinds of assumptions and get it all wrong. I confess I really enjoyed The Other Boleyn Girl, but I read it when I knew a great deal about Anne's life, and I knew the book wasn't historically accurate and didn't expect it to be.

This book is an important lesson to students of history: both about how little we really know about characters of the past, and about how much "history" is a reflection of our times rather than it is of whatever happened back then.

Who was Anne Boleyn? I can never think of her without thinking of Scarlet O'Hara as well, because that's how I picture Anne, as strong willed, determined, feisty, and unafraid. Anne was real though, not fictional, and she's come through history as a scarlet woman, an unscrupulous home wrecker who probably deserved to be executed. Susan Bordo has tackled the question of who/what this woman truly was and why Henry VIII, once so besotted with her, came to feel so compelled to wipe her off the face of the earth.

The first half of The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a historical study of contemporary documents, most of which, alas, were written by the queen's detractors (especially Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador.) But Anne had her admirers as well, and Ms. Bordo does an admirable job teasing out and presenting their opinions as well. Of particular merit is the space the author devotes to chronicling Anne's valuable religious work and her genuine social concerns; there is some evidence, for example, that Thomas Cromwell, who played a major role in her downfall, agreed with Anne's religious tenets but differed with her about what should be done when the religious houses were "reformed".

The second part of the book examines Anne's role in popular culture over the centuries. Ms. Bordo provides brief reviews of her treatment in literature, up to the present day. Surprisingly, she devotes even more time to Anne's portrayal in the movies and television, with entire chapters describing the production of the recent Showtime series, "The Tudors". Not being much interested in pop culture and celebrity, reading this section seemed to me like perusing an issue of People magazine at the hairdresser. Hence the four star rating. But hey, that's just me.

Overall, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is strong enough to counter the image of Anne Boleyn as a thoroughly immoral concubine or witch. Perhaps she is not England's greatest queen, but she made an important contribution to the country's religious development, and was, after all, the mother of England's greatest queen. Talk about important contributions!

With all the media attention paid to Anne Boleyn over the last couple of years, this was a book that seriously needed to be written. I know there are people out there that actually think anything written in historical fiction or shown on "The Tudors" is historical fact. YIKES! This book addresses a lot of the misconceptions, so it's a very worthwhile read.

I had a couple of issues, though. First, the author seems to pick and choose which primary sources to believe or disregard...sometimes differing in opinion on the same source. While I agree that someone like Chapuys was probably highly prejudiced, I would argue that ALL the primary sources took one side or the other, so choosing which are "valid" is kind of chancy. I guess everyone can interpret the primary sources differently, but some of the statements about them just seemed arbitrary.

My other problem was with the PERSONAL attack on Philippa Gregory. Don't get me wrong; this book needed to address that Gregory's work is FICTION, not FACT, and I have no problem with that. However, calling out Gregory's arrogance and other personal traits should have been left to Facebook or discussion forums; it lowers the integrity of this book.

In her new book "The Creation of Anne Boleyn", academic Susan Bordo sets out to explore how and why Anne Boleyn's reputation has been shaped. Anne's story has inspired operas, plays, novels, television dramas and movies. She is a modern day mini-industry in her own right. She is the most memorable of Henry's half-dozen wives, as Bordo notes in her descriptions of Tudor fans' attempts to impose a kind of equality of interest on all six, championing one at the expense of the other, despite the fact that all six are not equally important, at least not in terms of long-term historical impact.

It is on this interaction between Boleyn's specter and popular culture that Bordo is at her strongest. Bordo is an expert on the academic politics of feminism and she goes to town on the allegedly "feminist" presentation of Anne in "The Other Boleyn Girl". Equally interesting are her assessments of Hilary Mantel's Anne Boleyn, resurrected as a deeply unpleasant predator in the novels "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies". Bordo is similarly strident in her discussion of modern academia's interest in Anne. She critiques G.W. Bernard's recent and very controversial biography of Anne Boleyn as "a sensationalistic, poorly argued extension of an equally flimsy scholarly article from 1991". It is this strident and often humorous opinionated approach to writing that makes Bordo's work thought-provoking and interesting, even if the reader does not necessarily agree with every conclusion.

Bordo manages to deftly balance searching for the real Anne and the Anne of historical opinion with the Anne of modern pop culture. In doing so, she has managed to keep her finger on the pulse of both emerging academic papers and things like Facebook, fan pages, successful TV shows and movies. This is a book that takes pop culture seriously and in doing so produces an utterly fascinating view of how historical reputations are shaped and made. A particularly fascinating section comes from her private interviews with two actresses famous for their on-screen portrayals of Boleyn - Canadian Genevieve Bujold, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in 1969's "Anne of the Thousand Days" and Natalie Dormer, who deservedly won legions of fan for playing Anne in the Showtime television series, "The Tudors". Dormer's section on how she worked hard to give her Anne more depth and passion, and the lengths she went to as an actress to perfect her characterization, will be interesting to students of theatre and acting, as much as to those of gender and history.

There are a few very minor errors in "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" - for instance, at one point Bordo refers to Anne Boleyn's sister, Mary, as "thought by many to be the prettier of the two". There are no contemporary descriptions of Mary Boleyn's appearance, whatsoever. However, Bordo is technically right in writing this, because somehow and from somewhere, the myth grew that Mary was the most beautiful of Thomas Boleyn's two daughters. Gaining validity by no surer virtue than that endowed by repetition the story of Mary Boleyn's prettiness is a reminder of the power that oft-repeated but unverifiable myths have on our perceptions of the past.

Finding errors in "The Creation of Anne Boleyn", however, is essentially nit-picking. This is an erudite and thoroughly researched examination of an enormous and very interesting topic. Tracing Anne's reputation in the sources of her own time, who said what and why, right the way through the dramas and novels of subsequent centuries, down to the biographies and silver screen adaptations, Susan Bordo has produced a witty, compelling, convincingly argued and fantastic book about one of England's most undeservedly notorious women. "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" is as fascinating as a commentary on modern culture, media and sexism as it is in discussing how a queen who died five hundred years ago has managed to remain the subject of so much fascination.

The key is the word "Creation" in the title. This isn't just a book about Anne Boleyn; it is a book about how Anne Boleyn has been viewed over time as both an historical figure and as a fictional character.

Anne Boleyn is, of course, fascinating. A schemer, an upstart, "French," a fit mate for Henry, a woman of great passion, a politician as skilled as almost any in the court, a whore, a sweet slip of a thing, and a victim...was Anne really all of these things? Well, yes, if you look at the wide range of stuff that has been written about her.

The brilliance of the tight and sometimes tart prose in this book, is that The Creation of Anne Boleyn isn't particularly interested in getting it "right," but is rather quite interested in viewing this woman through the many complementary and contrasting versions of her that have arisen over time. This is a short-ish book and a quick read, but it is dense. Admirably dense.

If you're read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, this is an excellent book to pick up to gain a wider perspective!

(Finally, I'm not in love with the sub-title of this book. Anne as England's "most notorious" Queen? I don't think she reigned long enough nor wielded enough political power to ever really be notorious...)

I purchased the Audio Book last week and have been having a BALL listening to Bordo's point of view on the Anne I thought I knew. This book has turned everything I thought about Anne on it's head - with many valid points. All the Starkey documentaries, BBC specials, books and films I devoured over the years now seem less relevant. If you have an unexplained fascination with Anne Boleyn or the Tudors, this book is an ABSOLUTE can't miss. It's like learning about Anne all over again, and I like this Anne even better.

Anne Boleyn is a passion of mine. This is a fun book which covers the myth of Boleyn and probable actualities. It's fair to her.
What I enjoyed the most was the interviews with actresses who have interpreted Anne in both movies and TV. If you are passionate about the story of Anne, the woman. This is a good book to add to your library.

Considering I've read numerous books about Anne Boleyn, I appreciated this attempt by Bordo to deconstruct this notorious (and often vilified) historical figure. She explores how history and, more recently, pop culture has shaped current views of Anne, beginning with Henry VIII's blatant destruction of all correspondence in her hand. Then there are male-centric biographies, popular historical fiction, and film and television portrayals of Anne. The structure of the book effectively demonstrates how Anne's reputation evolved over the centuries, first with the events that led to her demise, then examining the whys of her destruction and disgrace, and finally exploring her most famous portrayals (the film Anne of the Thousand Days, the novel The Other Boleyn Girl, the Showtime series The Tudors, etc).

I appreciated the first half of the book most, as it gives examples of how her contemporaries reacted to her (specifically Spanish Ambassador and Katherine of Aragon sympathizer Chapuys) and how different historians interpreted source materials to serve their own purpose in their portrayal of Anne. In attempting to reveal the true Anne, Bordo must break down the conflicting factions that have often been attached to Anne's story: protestant vs. catholic, masculine vs. feminine, vixen vs. victim. This strategy allows Anne to come through as a woman far ahead of her time with strong convictions about her religion and her status as a woman, a lover, a queen, and a mother.

The close scrutiny of Anne as a character in fiction and film could have been pared down a bit. I didn't need Bordo's critique of practically every actress who has ever portrayed Anne on stage or screen. The final pages seem to be more of a discourse on feminism and I definitely didn't need reactions and quotes from Anne fans on the author's Facebook page. Overall, I found this to be a thorough assessment of how general opinion of Anne has been molded throughout the centuries. Bottom line: she was an imperfect woman who met a tragic end due to a variety of unfortunate circumstances.

This is an excellent book that first examines the contemporaneous reporting about the life of Anne Boleyn and looks at the biases, loyalties, and motivations of the reporters. As a result, it becomes quite clear that much of what we "know" about Anne Boleyn is false. The actual record is much thinner that most of us think...and the Spanish ambassador was not a reliable witness. This reminds me of the mystery novel "The Daughter of Time" by Josephine Tey that similarly examines the reporting and history of Richard III.

Secondly, and less compellingly, the book traces how Anne has been seen differently in different times since.

I think this is a fine piece of work and I have to say I am astonished at the reviewer who was indignant that it disagreed with the novel "The Other Boleyn Girl" which I thought everyone realized was an entertaining fiction lightly based on fact.

This is the kind of book that I love. The Creation of Anne Boleyn is not so much a biography of one of England's most famous women as a cultural history of her legend & the way she has been portrayed in literature & history. Bordo goes back to the original documents & looks at what can be known as opposed to what can be imagined by the fertile brains of biographers, historians, novelists & movie makers in the almost 500 years since Anne's execution. Anne's reputation has suffered because, after her death, Henry was determined to erase all trace of her from his life. Her badges & symbols were removed from the palaces where she lived with Henry; her portraits were destroyed. Even Anne's appearance has been disputed. Was she dark, sallow & sharp-featured with an extra finger & a third breast? Was she a blond beauty whose sense of style & wit that she had cultivated at the French Court captivated the King? The battle between Anne's supporters & detractors has never ended. The most fascinating section of the book deals with the many depictions of Anne in popular culture, especially in the 20th & 21st centuries. From Merle Oberon in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) to Genevieve Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) & Natalie Dormer in the television series The Tudors (2008), Anne has epitomised the style of beauty current at the time. Howard Brenton's recent play, Anne Boleyn, even starred a blonde Anne, played by Miranda Raison. Bordo has interviewed Dormer, Bujold, Brenton & Michael Hirst, the scriptwriter of The Tudors. They all have interesting insights on the way Anne has been portrayed & the ways that they tried to depict her. Most interestingly, Howard Brenton's Anne is primarily a religious reformer rather than either ambitious would-be queen or vampish temptress. Bordo also takes a look at historical fiction from Jean Plaidy's The Lady in the Tower to Margaret Campbell Barnes's Brief Gaudy Hour. Bordo is not afraid to voice her strong opinions. She's scathing about biographers & historians like David Starkey, Alison Weir & G W Bernard & her chapter about Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl is titled Chapuys' Revenge! She also surveys the many internet sites & blogs dedicated to Anne. This is a fascinating look at the cultural history & afterlife of a woman whose life & times has interested me for many years.

This scholarly look at the life of Anne Boleyn is well-researched and thoroughly annotated. I'm not sure general readers will find it particularly engrossing unless they have a good background in Henry VIII and his wives. Fans of Phillipa Gregory may be surprised to find that most of her novel about Anne was pure fiction.

For me, this was a book like no other! I have not found myself underlining, making margin notes and dog earring a book for many years - but this book just ignited me so much that I had to make notes, notes and more notes! I did not merely really like this book, I loved it! No, I have none of those conspiratorial affiliations or associations - this book is just unique and very different. I'm a history buff, especially a British history buff, and I love the cultural aspects of history. This book could have been more tailored to my interests!

Susan Bordo is a philosopher, cultural & feminist historian, and humanities scholar from the University of Kentucky. She has presented us with a finely detailed, acutely researched and edifying history about the 'becoming' of the famous English Queen, Anne Boleyn. Ms. Bordo details precisely how the myth of Anne Boleyn has been created, defined and re-defined over the centuries.

This is not just a history book, nor is it to be considered necessarily biographical in nature. It is rather a book that details how the cultural history of Anne Boleyn over the centuries has morphed into the myth behind the Queen and about how those myths have shaped our understanding, and our version about the 'reality' of this fascinating woman, who, many feel, was a modern age woman confined by the 'feminine strictures' of her 16th century world. Anne Boleyn; was she a saint or a sinner? Was she really the instigator of reformed religion in Britain? Was she, in fact, malformed? Did she truly have the adulterous relationships that led her to the scaffold or was this simply a conspiracy that allowed Henry to bed a more fecund woman who could, he hoped, provide him with a true heir to his throne? How have the myriad characterizations of Anne in books, plays and movies, shaped our common perception of her as a female and Queen? What do we really know about the woman who was Anne Boleyn.

Drawing from myriad and prime sources such as the writings of Eustace Chapuys ,and Thomas Wyatt, Ms. Bordo sets the stage for the beginnings of the mythology that would develop. Topics covered in this book include how a variety of plays and movies, and the actors and actresses in them, have formed a part of our cultural understanding of Anne Boleyn. Ms. Bordo goes into detail about how each actress who has portrayed Anne Boleyn, and each writer who has written about her, have added their own 'personality' stamps to our conceptualizations about this legendary Queen. She has interviewed many of the living actress' and writers up to, and including, Natalie Dormer who played the Queen in the acclaimed TV series, "The Tudors" and writers such as Hilary Mantel. "Additionally, Ms. Bordo has spoken to the directors of plays and films about Anne Boleyn as well. She has researched all of the biographies and extant writings about this, most famous, Queen, and she delineates how these very diverse depictions have shaped our modern understanding and cultural opinions about this maligned, but thoroughly modern, Queen and woman by looking at her in relation to the realities and social norms of her own time.

I especially like an included quote from the famous author, Hilary Mantel, ( author of "Wolf Hall" and "Bringing Up The Bodies" fame) which states "...we always write from our own time...". How true is that? Each generation puts it's own stamp on the 'reality' of history and historical figures. Ms. Bordo attempts to sift through the various 'versions' of Anne Boleyn that have been devised by many authors, film makers, actors, and 'news' sources over the ages to try to distill what the reality of Anne Boleyn was.

I even enjoyed the Chapter headings of the book! They are all so descriptive! Here are a few:
Part One : Queen Interrupted
Henry: How Could He Do It?
Part Two : Recipes for Anne Boleyn
Annes After Lives from She-Tragedy to Historical Romance
The notes and sources pages are monumental! The pages are filled with rich fodder for future reading. The sources include books, periodicals, and websites. Another favorite inclusion is a "fact checker" which posits the facts versus the fiction in some well read books such as "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Philippa Gregory.

When I read historical fiction I remember, first and foremost that I am reading historical fiction - not history. One of my favorite things to do is read a good historical novel along with a non-fiction book concerning the same time period. I enjoy understanding to what extent the author has used the facts and how they have woven their fiction around the facts.! I think doing this had provided me with a wealth of solid historical background that I would certainly not have enjoyed had I merely read the fictional work. I love factual history, which in many cases, can be even more fascinating than fiction!

Have a look at "The Creation Of Anne Boleyn's" Face Book page and the author's blog/website.

This book was a delight to read, and I know, without any doubt, that it will be of interest to a wide array of people; those who love history, those who love British history, cultural historian fans, those who question how the media can "make or break" popularity. It's winner of a read!

This is the advertising verbiage for the book:

"...Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne's life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne's death more than her life. How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history's most infamous relationships.

Bordo also shows how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers imagined and re-imagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto "mean girl," feminist icon, and everything in between. In this lively book, Bordo steps off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to expertly tease out the human being behind the competing mythologies...."

The Creation of Anne Boleyn is only minimally a biography of Anne Boleyn. Instead, much of the focus is placed on the stories and mystique surrounding this famous queen, and how the "facts" and attitudes about her were developed. This was a fascinating book, which I feel I need to read over at least once more, as there is no way I could have absorbed everything in just one reading.

Bordo's analysis is fairly no-nonsense, taking on many of the accepted "facts" about Anne's life and death in a matter of fact way. She zeroes in on the less believable conclusions drawn by many modern historians and quite clearly deconstructs these notions. Bordo is extremely well informed and precise, clearly documenting what makes sense, and eviscerating the ideas that do not. Even so, I found her criticism well thought out and quite reasonable, rather than coming across as the catty disagreement professional criticism often appears to be (especially surrounding such a polarizing figure.)

In the book, we are taken from the rhetoric of Anne's lifetime, through that of her daughter and up to the present day. It is fascinating to see how each incarnation of Anne over the years has been shaped by the societal conciousness of the time. Is Anne portrayed as she was? Or as we want her to be? And how much does society overall care about the difference?

Being a longtime "Tudorphile", I found Bordo's conversational style very easy to read and relate to. While I have read criticism of her habit of interjecting personal anecdotes, I found it a very friendly, approachable method of communicating that she is not so different from those of us reading the book (although naturally, a much better writer!)

This book is not a biography, nor is it meant to be. It is an in-depth look at not only a historical figure, but about the way history morphs over time. I feel that many of Bordo's questions and conclusions could easily be applied to other historical figures and events. This book is a well written, well thought out examination of Anne's life, death and afterlife, packed with facts, psychology and a sense of unending curiosity that all too often is missed in the study of history.

If you are titillated by the bodice ripper cover and the implied revelations about Henry and Anne's sex life this book will disappoint you. The fact is that it is a very well researched and written thesis about the politics of Henry Tudor's Court. I was impressed by Ms. Bordo's interpretation of personalities and events, her verification and examination of detail and her restraint in stating the facts without indulging in the romantic embroidery common to so many books on this topic. She gives a clear and rational progression of events, a searching interpretation of personalities and a vivid understanding of the psychological and cultural contexts of the time. It is an impressive work of scholarship presented with a smooth flowing style that is rare in true historical research. This is a serious work, not a fictional fantasy. I recommend it highly to anyone who is truly interested in the Tudors and the Reformation.

This book is a very different kind of history book about Anne Boleyn. Not a fictionalized account of what she might have done or thought, and not a dry history, recounting the few hard facts that have been regurgitated and re-interpreted over the years. Susan Bordo, an intelligent and thoughtful feminist writer has done exhaustive research and study on the phenomena that is Anne Boleyn, and her impact on the modern consciousness.

Ms. Bordo's introduction is entitled "The Erasure of Anne Boleyn and the Creation of Anne Boleyn," and she addresses her reasons and inspiration for writing this book. Now, if you are a big fan of Phillipa Grepgory, or David Starkey, or Allison Weir, or any of the other prolific authors of both fiction and "history" books about the Tudors, be prepared: Ms. Bordo does not mince words about the inaccurate nature of these works and their authors. She rips apart the many myths and legends that have been propagated by those authors, over and over again. One of the biggest, most glaring mistakes made by so many authors is taking Spanish Ambassador Chapuys' letters as the Gospel truth regarding Anne and Henry's Great Matter. She identifies hearsay as what it is: court gossip, with no basis in reality.

Anne's letters were mostly destroyed, so Anne's actual thoughts on many matters are mostly unknown. Ms. Bordo, in chapters dedicated to certain rumors, books, and movies/tv shows, tears down the misogynistic half truths about Anne. She also acknowledges Anne's intelligence regarding so many of the issues of her time. It was Anne who supplied Henry with many treatises about religion and already growing Protestant reformation, and her revulsion in Cromwell and Henry's misappropriation of funds and goods taken from the monasteries that were taken.

Ms. Bordo also examines Anne's effect on popular culture and how there has been a new rise in interest, resulting in many novels and Facebook groups and websites devoted to her.

I really loved reading this book. The author has a wonderful writing style, and has obviously dived deeply into the oceans of information, books, websites, movies, and popular culture references to exhaust the subject., and then manages to fuse it all together into a delightful and fun read for fans of Anne. Mmmm....great name for a webpage...

I was impressed with this book when I read the introduction and the author clearly states that a lot of what we think we know about Anne Boleyn is speculation. Much of the "history" was destroyed when she was beheaded and the new queen took her place. Henry wanted nothing of her legacy to survive. However, the author researched what exists today as well as texts from long ago to piece together an interesting history of the queen everyone wants to know more about. She writes in an engaging style and tries to explain away some of the Hollywood stories about Anne, or show how the stories might be based on fact. I have, for many years, had a facination with the Tudors and this book is one of the best I have ever read. I strongly recommend it.

Anne Boleyn is one of the most controversial figures in English history. Unfortunately, most of what we "know" about her comes from the reports of her enemies.

Susan Bordo examines the way historians, authors, and other mediums have built their own legends around Anne Boleyn, and how their perceptions of her character have shaped the way we see her. It's a cultural history of what those perceptions say about our changing society. It's also an examination of how these perceptions get added to the "official narrative" as they're repeated down the line.

Bordo writes in a conversational, accessible style which should make this book an enjoyable read for anyone who's interested in Anne Boleyn. I appreciate the way she relates the events of the day to modern ones, such as comparing the storm of gossip around Anne Boleyn's arrest to the OJ Simpson trial - both were hotly debated and divisive.

Highly recommended! Susan Bordo has written not only an exquisitely researched book, but a vastly entertaining one, as well.

"The Creation Of Anne Boleyn" must surely stand as Susan Bordo's crowning achievement. It is clear from the minute dissection of Anne's life, both pre-Henry and with-Henry, that the scholarship involved is intensive; it seems that very few written accounts, factual and fictional, were not closely studied over the course of her writing of this book, which began as a joint effort going in a totally different direction and culminated with Ms Bordo's obsession with all things Anne.

This is part history and part commentary on cultural mores and attitudes, about any number of topics that touched Anne's life, and usually a history, by its very nature, becomes at least a little dry; but Ms Bordo succeeds in making this account come to life with her inclusion of all the different takes on Anne over the past 400 years. She spends a lot of time on "The Tudors", the soap-operish (but very watchable) Showtime telling of the story, and she addresses all the small issues everyone has had about it; she covers (with more reverence) "Anne Of The Thousand Days", a 1969 movie about Anne and Henry with Anne played, to great effect, by Genevieve Bujold, a French-Canadian actress not well known until then (although I saw her in a stage production put to film of "Antigone" and am convinced that she can make any character her own), with Richard Burton as Henry (Elizabeth Taylor, perish the thought, wanted to play Anne; I can't imagine what a disaster that would have made of the movie, with all due respect to Ms Taylor). Ms Bordo covers the beliefs of the day, towards Anne and also towards her headstrong and independent style of life; she also takes on the possible reasons why Henry acted as he did. While pointedly in favor of Anne, Ms Bordo does not flinch from presenting all the foibles and mistakes Anne made in her path to the crown - and in her disastrous fall from grace. She makes us see a whole Anne, the sum of all her parts; and while steering the reader away from deciding that Anne was, in reality, a shrew who brought it all on herself, she does point out the elements that made the kingdom see her that way. A lot of the blame is laid at the feet of both Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, and both Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, who were all in it for their own ends anyway, and in the old-boy world of 16th-century politics, the men were going to listen to the men anyway and not a puny woman. The perennial push-pull between male and female ways of thinking is brought out as well, and inspected from every angle.

Ms Bordo's intensive examination of this sad story is not without its digs (she puts a few novel accounts of Anne's
life on the rack, including "The Other Boleyn Girl", which she especially seems to have issues with - with good reason; the book contains many inaccuracies presented as fact; "Wolf Hall", which she actually liked; and several film productions that caricatured its characters)but in fairness she finds what she can to praise about them. Clearly, however, there is little about Anne that can be found out that she hasn't; I wouldn't be surprised for her to recognize the woman on the street if she suddenly stepped out from a time machine. It's also worth noting that Natalie Dormer, who played Anne in "The Tudors", made a special study of Anne as well, and her empathy with Anne shows in her performance. This is backed up by Ms Bordo, who had the privilege of interviewing Ms Dormer at some depth.

Overall this is a history/cultural examination that I found eminently readable, and even made me giggle a couple of times at Ms Bordo's dry wit in some places. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Anne as a person and in the Tudor court itself.

Author Bordo pens a masterpiece of "visionist" history, i.e., she corrects (by ethical, attention-to-the-minutest-detail, painstaking and completely thorough research) all the errors (ignorant, purposeful, lazy, hateful, politically and religiously biased, etc.) attributed to Anne Boleyn - to her life, to her character, to her motivations, to her circumstances, to her marriage, to her death and to her impact upon and her importance to England's history.

Bordo' s work is tremendous and transformative; it's also a MIGHTY FINE, VERY ENTERTAINING and VERY INTERESTING read! A non-fiction work that is COMPLETELY HISTORICALLY VETTED, and which completely entertains is a rare and brilliant find; BRAVO, Ms. Bordo!

You may be surprised at what we know about her depends on when her biography was written, the bias of those who wrote about her and the sources relied on. This is very in-depth work on the perceptions and myths about this fascinating woman. The author has researched and reviewed virtually every credible and not so credible source. This book should be required required reading for courses on the Tudors and Women's History.

Through my interest in Anne Boleyn and Tudor history I have read many books which look at and recount the life of Anne Boleyn, where she was born, when she started her relationship with Henry VIII, how she was executed; yet never before have I read a book like the one written by Susan Bordo. Bordo's book is not a simple retelling of Anne Boleyn's life, nor is it an attempt to examine how she might have felt or the motives behind her actions - Bordo's book is a look at Anne Boleyn and how she has been portrayed throughout history. From the generations after her death to almost five hundred centuries later in today's modern times.

The Creation of Anne Boleyn is just as the title suggests - an examination of how Anne Boleyn has been formed, portrayed, reformed and portrayed again throughout the centuries. Bordo looks at the different interpretations of Anne Boleyn, her actions and her life throughout different time periods and examines why certain beliefs and feelings developed. For example during Mary I's reign Anne was seen as a whore, the woman who stole Queen Katherine, Mary I's mother away from her husband. Yet in Elizabeth's reign, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, Anne was seen as a reformer and a remarkable woman. Why the changes in attitude to a single woman? Differences in culture, beliefs and allegiances.

The same thing has happened throughout history where women's place in society has shifted dramatically from the house wife whose duty it was to stay at home, cook, clean and tend to the children. To the feminist movement where women pushed for equal status and more rights to today's modern times where women are no longer thinking about themselves as victims but as strong, independent people who can be both sexual and intelligent. How Anne Boleyn has been perceived in literature, movies and other mediums has vastly been affected by these very different beliefs about women.

I found this examination of the way Anne Boleyn has been presented throughout history absolutely fascinating as I had never really thought about how Anne was perceived in other generations other than my own and during the reign of Mary I and Elizabeth I. It was very interesting to look at how Anne's life, her beliefs and her actions were presented to the people through literature and media during different generations with vastly different agenda - ranging from the house wife to the modern day woman. Anne Boleyn was a multifaceted woman, and through reading Bordo's book I can see how different parts of her life were picked out or twisted depending on what the author or people wanted to portray. Was she the sexual property of Henry VIII? Flaunting herself and giving her husband everything he wanted like a good wife? Was she the home wrecker that destroyed a marriage? Was she the strong, independent woman who knew what she wanted and went for it? Well it all depends on the different agenda that authors and others are writing from.

Another aspect of Bordo's book was breaking down the facts about Anne Boleyn's life. She gave a simple outline of Anne's life and then began to examine these so called facts. Why do we believe them to be facts? What evidence is there? What basis is there to be making such claims or statements? Bordo challenges the reader to really think about and question information about Anne's life that is presented in books, movies, TV and other sources. Anne delivered a disfigured foetus one book claims and upon reading this people may take it for fact... yet is it? No, in fact when you dig deeper and truly examine and study the facts that are known there is no evidence for this. Bordo's book challenges the reader not to take everything that is written or said about Anne Boleyn as fact - instead question, think, analyse, judge, critique and most of all delve deeper to find out the real truth. This I think is a brilliant challenge for readers, as far too often people can take what is written or presented to them as fact when reality is far different. I strongly applaud Susan Bordo for encouraging readers/viewers to try and find out the real truth for themselves, to challenge the facts and not to take everything they hear or read about Anne Boleyn as simple truth.

I loved this book and have to say that it is one of my favourite books about Anne Boleyn. The Creation of Anne Boleyn is not just simple biography of Anne and her life; it is an examination of how Anne Boleyn has been portrayed throughout the centuries and why these different portrayals have come to be. This book encourages readers to find out the truth about the real Anne Boleyn and not to take everything they see or read as simple fact. Bordo's book also gives the reader a strong sense of empowerment, to take learning into their own hands.

I strongly recommend that anyone who is interested with Anne Boleyn stop whatever they are currently reading and go and get this book - you will not regret it!

How do you write a biography of a woman who has already been exhaustively covered by others and a woman, who it turns out, is not well documented in the first place? You write what Bordo has - a careful, illuminating and very well written book about how history/society has viewed her. This book is not a biography per se. It wan't intended to be and those reviewers who criticize the book due to the lack of biographical material are missing the point. While not obsessed with Anne Boleyn or the Tudors, I have read my fair share of books on the family and was grateful to have this guide to what was true and was is simply not known. I also loved her analysis of how Anne has been represented through history and what that says about society, women and religion at those different points in time. The modern representations of Anne in cinema were the most fascinating to me (as I am a movie buff!) but you should definitely see the movies she discusses before reading the analysis - you'll enjoy it much more even it means sitting through some pretty awful stuff... (The Other Boleyn Girl is truly bad...)

My other caution about this is that Bordo correctly points out the problems of bias and speculation in the historical accounts of Anne Boleyn but then falls prey to some of those flaws herself when she attempts to ferret out motives among the main characters. That's very difficult to avoid when you're writing a book like this and it is by no means a fatal flaw, just something to look out for when reading. I really loved this book.

Finally, It is well written and extremely accessible. There was one discussion of feminist theory and constructs that got a little academic but it only lasts a few pages. The rest of the book kept me happily absorbed for two cross-country flights!

I'm at a loss to understand some of the criticisms made about this book. In my opinion, this is an important work about the modern world as well as history. Its importance comes from what Bordo is showing us: that when we talk about Anne Boleyn, we are talking as much about a rhetorical construct as we are about a historical figure. In fact, we can learn as much (or more) about the people discussing Anne as we can about Anne herself, by how they interpret and describe her. This is a fascinating and important work about how we interpret culture, gender, and history. This is not to say that it's not a book about Anne Boleyn herself, but it's also about the ways we think about her, and what that tells us about our own values and biases.

Like many of us who are fascinated by Anne Boleyn, I pay close attention to Claire Ridgway's excellent website "The Anne Boleyn Files." Part of what I find most intriguing are the discussion boards, in which it is quite common to see people say things like, "I think that Anne felt/thought/believed/etc." I've had similar thoughts myself. I've always wondered why we are so quick to say and think such things, given that we really have very little evidence about what Anne felt/thought/believed on most topics. If you've ever wondered the same...READ THIS BOOK. Of course, Anne was a living, thinking, feeling woman, and her history plays a role in Bordo's work. But this is more than a book about history; it's about asking important questions about our worldviews and how we construct them.

Even if I found nothing else worthwhile in this book (and I found much), it would have been worth it for the insight it gives the reader into actress Natalie Dormer's own interpretation of Anne Boleyn, particularly in the filming of Boleyn's execution...if you didn't adore Dormer before, you will after reading her interview with Bordo.

What a curate's egg of a book this is! It is neither biography nor historiography but a curious combination of the two. The main character is not the title character but the author herself, who injects her personality frequently into the narrative. I mention this fact not as a negative criticism; instead, such autobiographical excursions turn Bordo's book into a kind of mystery, as we follow her winding trail of discovering the "real" Anne Boleyn. (This journey includes the author's memorable near-death encounter with a London red double-decker bus!)

Roughly the first half of the book is biographical, or at least it shuffles about in the miasma of biographical uncertainties. The second part is a more-or-less linear study of Queen Anne in fiction, and the meandering third section concerns the Queen in film and television, with special attention paid to the HBO series "The Tudors" and the novel/film "The Other Boleyn Girl," all of which are riddled with historical errors from trivial to vitiating. The conclusion tells of the author and her daughter in England on a research tour.

Bordo's study is not intended as a biography of Queen Anne and thus is not recommended as a first book on the subject. The reader should have (at a minimum) a solid command of the biographical facts of Henry VIII and his second wife, plus some knowledge of the subject in film, including the two works mentioned in the previous paragraph along with the Charles Laughton "Private Life of Henry VIII" and the Burton/Bujold "Anne of the Thousand Days." Such readers will have a good time exploring the life and legacy of Queen Anne in the pages of Bordo's worthwhile book.

For anyone who has read endless articles and books on Boleyn, the author reviews the way in which she has been used and misinterpreted to fit different ideologies. I would and have recommended this book to anyone who wants to understand not only the ill fated queen but also how we impose modern concepts on historical figures.

Really enjoyed this book. The author has done her homework on the subject of Anne and has done her justice when history has dragged her down before. Also enjoyed the comparisons of other works and movies about Anne. I am glad to see someone else thinks she was an extraordinary woman and not merely the "concubine" she has been made out to be.

For someone who has been dead for almost 500 years, Anne Boleyn has shown a remarkable knack for evolving over time. In history, biography, fiction and film, Boleyn seems to reflect what's on our mind as a society. Over the centuries she's been the innocent victim, the deformed schemer, an everywoman caught up in a situation beyond her control, and a dozen other characterizations. It's no surprise that she's been portrayed in dramatic ways in novels and movies, but even in serious history books, she changes her spots to fit the season.

Susan Bordo has crammed a lot to think about in a single volume. She looks at the history of Anne Boleyn histories, as well as how Anne Boleyn has been portrayed fictionally. And just in case you haven't been keeping up to date with the ever-changing Anne Boleyn, Bordo examines the evidence and gives us as fair a biography of La Bolena as she can.

It's no surprise that the fictional Anne Boleyn covers the spectrum of women from political martyr to evil stepmother, but serious historians to this very day seem to take liberties with the facts and rely on their own prejudices and hunches to paint a picture of Boleyn that may or may not be accurate. Bordo opens with a paragraph that appears to be taken straight from a period romance novel, but is from historian David Starkey's Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII. One of my own favorites, Alison Weir, is apparently no better.

A provocative and fun book, The Creation of Anne Boleyn may not get us any closer to the truth, but it's an entertaining reminder that whether you are enjoying The Showtime series The Tudors or reading the latest academic study, be sure to bring a little skepticism along.

Enjoyed the book. I have read Wolf Hall and The Other Boleyn Girl recently. I have always been sympathetic to Anne Boleyn but this book gives a whole new perspective. The book seemed overlong and kept harping on the same points. Not a book I would read again but important to followers of the Tudors.

I couldn't be more happier with this Book, finally after so many Anne Boleyn books, one of them stands out, Susan Bordo has make something that no one has ever done before, how the image of Anne has change dramatically over the years. since her execution in 1536 many calumnies had been said about her, what I like about this book is that Susan clears every rumour about our fallen Queen, she slams at historians and authors when it needs to be, and praises them as well for their contributions and well founded theories.
Part biography, but mostly this book is a time machine, Susan transports us to very different eras...and very different Annes, finally we have the oportunity to see the Anne Boleyn of the Plays, the Anne Boleyn of literature, the Anne Boleyn of Movies, the Anne Boleyn of TV and the Anne Boleyn of the Internet.
Full with interviews from the great Genevieve Bujold, Natalie Dormer and even Michael Hirst!!(creator of Showtime's The Tudors TV Series), for me, this represents the Voice of the People, I was so hooked from it's first pages mostly because I felt that I was reading my own thoughts about Anne, I realize that Susan thinks the same way I do, and I'm pretty sure lot's of people feel the same way, Anne Boleyn is a very beloved character and in here we can see, why she's so important to us, why she stoods out of other historical figures and how people can easily make a new Anne.
Nothing by praise for this book, every Anne Boleyn fan or someone researching her needs this material, you won't regret having it, even if you don't agreed with Susan's conclusions. I'm also taking this oportunity to actually congratulate Susan in all her hard work, I'm pretty sure this was a labor of Love from the beginning.

*Marco A. Boleyn*

I will admit up front for 6 years I have been an avid reader/consumer of all things Anne Boleyn and most things Tudor. After reading The Other Boleyn Girl, which I personally found atrocious (in my heart of hearts I could not believe the real Anne Boleyn was that horrendous), I knew I had a duty to history and to a fellow woman to dig up as much truth as I could. So, I am coming from this perspective while reading Bordo's book. However, I think people new to the Tudors or the story of Anne Boleyn would benefit greatly from this work. I wish I'd had it around when I first became interested.

The first third of Bordo's book covers the more traditional ground of summarizing Anne Boleyn's rise to and fall from the King's "grace" while introducing some relevant cultural and media-oriented history. It's a nice juxtaposition, and reminds the informed reader while priming the new reader about Anne Boleyn's tragic history. I personally found glee in Bordo's gentle but firm taking to task of authors who have been irresponsible in their research (Gregory, Starkey, and Weir) and therefore have contributed to the ever evolving - or devolving, depending on your viewpoint - of Anne's image. While this may appear to be an attack at first, in fact Bordo readily points out her own prejudices and shortcomings in approaching this research. She is simply outlining the tapestry as it's been formed by many different weavers, and makes no apologies.

The last 2 thirds of the book take us through an interesting journey on her cultural transformation through the centuries and how prevailing social thought and pressures at any given time transformed that evolution. This ranges anywhere from Victorian thought to the recent successful Tudors series, which I admit I loved despite it's issues. Natalie Dormer's Anne Boleyn was absolutely haunting while Genevieve Bujold's was defiant and proud, and Bordo shows us how these performances have contributed to Anne's cultural image.

After death Anne's image has been pulled in every direction from independent, intelligent, seductive, and proud, to a shrunken, raging harridan with six fingers and a murderous glare. Whoever she really was, as stewards of history it's an author's responsibility to remember that Anne Boleyn is not imaginary. She was a real human being who triumphed, suffered, and died. In Susan Bordo she finds an intelligent advocate that every woman in history needs, no matter her story.

Bordo is not pandering to a particular audience or historical elite - she is writing this for Anne. Anne deserves this, and she is giving it to her in her honor.

I will admit it. I am fascinated by Anne Boleyn. I always have been ever since I picked up Robin Maxwell's book "The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn" years ago. Ever since then, I have been reading up on history books written by Antonia Fraser and Alison Weir (they were my favorite authors and still are, but I think Susan Bordo is starting to take their place in my heart). I love history. I love historical fiction and yes, I have read books by Philippa Gregory, though I was not a fan of her book "The Other Boleyn Girl" as I found several glaring inaccuracies in the story. If given a choice, I will pick this book over all others.

Why would I pick this one? Susan Bordo takes the reader down the path of suppositions and interviews, a thorough study of why after 500 years, Anne Boleyn has captured the interests of millions of people and why do people feel so strongly about her? Henry VIII might have destroyed her pictures and letters and such, so practically nothing remains of the most famous Queen in English history. But the thought of her still persists. Bordo takes the reader on a journey through pop culture, history lessons, historical theories and more. She interviews Natalie Dormer who played Anne in the popular Showtime series, "The Tudors" (and is personally my favorite actress to play Anne) to see what she thought of her famous character.

My review is all over the place but I can guarantee you that Ms. Bordo's book is well-written and thoughtfully examines the question of why Anne is still notorious. She examines everything, from Chapuys, the Spanish envoy in King Henry's court to Ms. Dormer and her thoughts on Anne. Bordo tears apart the theories that have sprouted up throughout the years, especially the mystery of the sixth finger (which has been proven to be false as when they exhumed Anne's body, there were no sixth finger or other such deformities).

Personally, I found this book a fascinating read and never once did I wish that I would get to the end of this book. In fact, if anything, it has taught me that no matter how much a subject has been examined and studied, history is still subject to different convictions and points of views, dependent on different minds even among the ones who actually were there.

If you like history and you like historical fiction but would like to test the waters of reading something more meatier, this book is for you. It is personally one of my favorites so far this year. I hope Ms. Bordo will continue to write more books like this one!

3/11/13

I enjoyed this book immensely. The author did a great job researching the researchers and revealing how people have looked at Anne Boleyn and why and managed to keep me interested the whole time. Since so little is really known about Anne Boleyn that can be confirmed, it has been a very bumpy ride for her legacy and the author takes us over every bump up until the present and does so with great ease on the reader. Excellent book that I will cherish in my library forever.

I wasn't sure what to expect with The Creation of Anne Boleyn. I've read many books about her life and viewed the different films that the move industry has produced. Her marriage to King Henry the VIII of England made her the Queen of England, but also brought her downfall. I've always felt sorry that Anne died such a horrible death.

The various actors who played King Henry in the many different movies made for interesting reading. My personal favorite King Henry was Robert Shaw In the 1966 film A Man For All Seasons and was pleased to see that the author favored him too.

Bordo is clever and I had to laugh when she called King Henry, "the Brad Pitt of his day." She also revealed that Jonathan Swift also left his opinion of Henry VIII. Swift had handwritten in one of his books that he wished the king had been flayed. And then he described that he should have be punished in several horrible ways!

The author scrutinized the various women who played Anne Boleyn in films throughout the years, telling their strengths and weakness in the ways they depicted Anne --each in their particular movie. Here are a few of the women who portrayed Anne: Genevieve Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days. Merle Oberon in The Private Life of Henry VIII. Dorothy Tutin in the Masterpiece TV series The Six Wives of Henry VIII; and Natalie Portman in the Other Boleyn Girl. The recent Tudor's series feature Natalie Dormer as Anne.

I think Anne will always remain an enigma. She was confident, and for awhile she had the world and the King of England at her feet. I don't believe that she was a bad person, but she had a lot of people who disliked the power that she had gained and a contingent of courtiers circulated lies and nasty gossip about her. I don't think that most of the stories were even true, but they seem to continue to show up in various novels and films.

I loved this book! As a life-long admirer of Anne Boleyn (since age 10), I have read many, many books about her, and none captured her essence quite like this book has. The author touches on Anne's history, and her influence in television, movies, and novels.

I particularly enjoyed how the author critiques many of the novels on Anne Boleyn; she compares them and tells you about the history involved in the novel, how much was factual, and how much was invented by the author, for dramatic license. She also shows you how the depiction of Anne in novels has progressed through the years, and how the writing for Anne is a reflection of the particular time in history that the novel was written in.

The style of the book is serious, and yet quite playful at times; I found it very engaging. She also tells you about the process of researching for the book, and the interviews she has with actors, writers, and producers are very revealing. (The interviews with Natalie Dormer (Anne Boleyn in "The Tudors") and Genvieve Bujold (Anne Boleyn in "Anne of the Thousand Days") are especially good, and a must read for Anne fans.

I would put this in my list of Best Books about Anne Boleyn, and quite near the top, to be honest. When I finished it, I immediately wanted to read it again. Highly recommended!!

I enjoyed this book and this narration of it immensely. The narrator I am familiar with and she does strong American women well. However, it is the book that really shines for me. First, there is the typical history of Anne, WITHOUT the, AS IT WERE's of historians and WITH opinions. Then there is pop culture history related to Anne, which is also a study on how history changes with the generations and perceptions. This is a must for any graduate student in history.

THE CREATION OF ANNE BOLEYN is less a biography of the (in)famous queen and more a meta history of her life and afterlife. The author, Susan Bordo, examines the different portrayals of Anne since her death, including biographies, historical fiction, television shows, movies, and plays.

There's a LOT on Anne Boleyn out there. But how much of it is true and how much is fiction?

That's a surprisingly hard question to answer. Henry VIII destroyed everything he could, from Anne's letters to portraits, and so most of what is known about her comes from the letters of Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador. Chapuys was no fan of Anne -- he referred to her as "that whore" or "the concubine (p. 7)." It's no surprise that he disliked Anne, as he thought she was responsible for Henry's horrible treatment of Katherine. (For the non history buffs, Katherine was the aunt of Chapuys' master, Charles the Holy Roman Emperor.)

Despite reading quite a few books on Henry and his wives, both fiction and nonfiction, I never thought about where information on Anne came from. THE CREATION OF ANNE BOLEYN discusses how many of the writings on Anne since her death have been influenced by the writer's religious perspectives, culture, and gender.

I wasn't familiar with some of the books, movies, and plays that the author examined. Take "Anne of the Thousand Days," for example. It's a movie brought up a lot, as the author thinks Genevieve Bujold played one of the best Anne's. If I had been familiar with more of the sources mentioned, I might have enjoyed this book more. At the beginning of this review, I called this a meta history, and I called it that because I think the author's own feelings on Anne and the different media representations come through clearly.

The most important thing I took away from this book was not to take everything a historian says at face value. As Susan Bordo shows over and over again, sometimes historians make their own assumptions without evidence to back them up, or they use biased information, such as Chapuys' letters.

Everyone has their own view of who Anne Boleyn was and what she did. What I liked best about THE CREATION OF THE ANNE BOLEYN is that it shows where those views might have come from. I personally think that Anne was a strong woman, who was perhaps too outspoken for her time. Others might see Anne as a femme fatale, feminist, or even villain, depending on what they have read and their own life experiences.

I'd recommend THE CREATION OF ANNE BOLEYN for the dedicated Anne Boleyn fan and other Tudorphiles. If you don't already know about Anne's life, find a biography or two first and then come back to this book.

This book cannot be easily classified, and therein lies its uniqueness and its brilliance. Instead of sticking within the "rules" of one discipline, Bordo brings intelligence, rigor, curiosity, careful analysis, and broad historical and cultural knowledge to bear on centuries of mythology (perpetuated both in scholarship and popular culture) and in doing so endows Anne Boleyn with fresh life. Don't expect genuflections to received wisdom from this book; the author is independent-minded and unafraid to go where her intelligence and research leads her, even if it means scratching the armor of a few icons--something that in my opinion was long overdue in some cases. To top it off, the book is immensely readable--clear, engaging, honest, and wonderfully written. A great read for general readers as well as scholars of the subject, and perfect for teaching purposes, as it deals with media depictions of Anne as well as fiction and historical research. Used in combination with film, novels, historical documents (e.g. Henry VIIIs letters to Anne, which Bordo explores in the cultural context of courtly love) and Eric Ives' biography of Anne (a work Bordo greatly admires), this book could provide the "syllabus" for a fantastic interdisciplinary course. Simply terrific!

I was hesitant to get this book from the cover. Isn't this a terrible cover? I think the publisher could have done a much better job with that. But I'm glad I went ahead and read it because the author did a wonderful job dissecting the truth version fiction about Anne Boleyn. A lot of pieces of pop culture and movies are talked about, as is history's perception of Anne Boleyn. Really well done.

Susan Bordo pulls together the legends, stories and tales of Anne Boleyn. Despite Henry VIII's attempts to eradicate her memory, Anne Boleyn is his most well known wife. Bordo spends a large part of the book talking about how Anne's tale has been influenced by cultural history and the historian/author discussing her.

I found this book to be an interesting point of view about Anne's legacy. At times I thought the book was a bit dry, but that is the nature of scholarly writings. Overall, not a bad book, but not something I would reread.

I have read so many books on Anne Boleyn since I am very interested in her story and I must say that I have read many biographies on her that are indeed repetitive but this is not the case. This book contains a biographical part but that's not its purpose and I think customers should know what they are going to buy before do it. This book is about Anne Boleyn as portrayed by mass culture; in literature are also in media. This is a scholar work, that's true but I think it is also very interesting for those who love Anne Boleyn. For me, this book is essential in Anne Boleyn's works and studies because for me, it is completley newflanged. If you love Anne Boleyn, it is not only her biography what you must know but also her afterlife in mass culture. Have you ever wondered why is she one of the most popular historical characters in the world? Then, this book will answer you.

This book just didn't do it for me. I had thought it was going to be a historical fiction, when infact it reads more like a book of a bit biased (?) facts. Maybe I didn't read the description well prior to purchase. There are indeed some interesting items about Anne Boleyn and her plight I wasn't aware of, but about half way through it became a bit redundant and I was never motivated enought to finish. Still on my kindle incase I should someday want to read further. If you are looking for more of a history book than a fun read, you will probably find it quite informative. Not my cup of tea...

Susan Bordo has written a nonfiction book titled "The Creation of Anne Boleyn (A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen)". I knew that this would be a good book when Anne Boleyn dies about a third of the way through and an explanation of the life and times of Anne and King Henry VIII ensues. The book is particularly strong in placing Anne in a cultural context rather than viewing her as tart or victim acting only from her own impulses. Henry is viewed from a psychological point of view and that is a ton of fun. We, the Anne Boleyn enthusiasts, also get a workup as Bordo discusses the creation of Anne's personae in books, plays, movies and miniseries through the centuries (I now understand why every woman in the BBC production of "The Tudors" was so willing.)

I have always wished that Catherine of Aragon had let go much earlier and not made it so rough on everyone around her, but then, perhaps the time for that battle had arrived. Bordo's book has made me even more interested in the Reformation. That curiosity is what a good book hooks -- it leaves more questions than it answers and a reader can't wait for what the writer says next.

"The Creation of Anne Bolryn.. " is a well researched and scholarly work which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. As Susan Bardo adeptly points out the Anne (or should I say the Annes) most of us know are a creation the authors who are telling the stories of Anne or the notorious characters in her life. In each case Anne was created to fit the story the author wanted to tell. I have been fascinated with Anne Boleyn for decades and have always wondered what the real Anne was like. Susan Bardo combs through fact, fiction and legend and describes the real Anne and the evolution of all of the other Annes.

I just read the free sample on my Kindle and plan to buy this. I have been reading about Anne Boleyn since I was about 12 - starting with Evelyn Anthony and Norah Lofts's old novels - and over the years have come to appreciate a skeptical eye on the possible motivations of the people creating the original sources (i.e. Chapuys, or the chroniclers that established the Tudor view of Richard III). I cannot bring myself to watch "The Tudors" or read any more Alison Weir. I can't wait to read the rest, and wanted to stand up and cheer when she skewered David Starkey in the first chapter. I hope there's more of that to come!

This isn't brilliant or even intriguing the way some biographies can be. It is however interesting enough. Admittedly, it was at the bottom of a to-be-read pile for months before it was finished on an airplane. Captive audience and all

How did a woman rise from relative obscurity to influence the course of history and become queen of England? That is the question nearly every biography and fictional account of Anne Boleyn seeks to answer. In The Creation of Anne Boleyn Susan Bordo seeks to answer that and a less explored question: how did Anne go from historical figure to cultural touchstone?

Bordo is a cultural studies specialist rather than a historian. She is primarily interested in what Anne Boleyn means to contemporary culture but she grounds that meaning in an understanding of who Anne was. Or, perhaps better put, might have been. Given the paucity of contemporaneous first-hand accounts it is impossible to know what Anne thought or what drove her actions or what was actually said or even whether she was blonde or brunette. This incomplete picture has left room for writers and artists of all types to create Anne as they see her or need her to be to suit their narrative or world view. Bordo explores these shifting images of Anne - the shadows of the real woman, alternately larger and smaller than the long dead queen - to understand what informed and drove these depictions.

For anyone immersed in Tudoriana, this book may feel quirky in its focus: an entire chapter the 1969 movie Anne of a Thousand Days yet nothing on Evelyn Anthony's or Lozana Prole's DARK EYED QUEEN's vastly different conceptions of Anne. The same is true of Boleyn biographies where Joanna Denny's unique take is unexplored. Bordo does not pretend that this is a definitive study of every depiction of Anne Boleyn. You may find your favorites left out but you will find detailed consideration given to The Other Boleyn Girl (book, miniseries and movie) and The Tudors [HD], among others.

I enjoyed this book overall. I found Bordo's historical analysis less compelling (but still interesting) than her cultural analysis. When Bordo brings the two together, such when she reminds readers that we must read Henry's letters to Anne's through the lens of Courtly Love instead of Showtime, this book becomes essential reading. If you know Anne Boleyn only from recent movies and miniseries, this book is a good place to start to learn more about this fascinating woman.

As other reviewers have pointed out, "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" isn't much of a biography on her, although a brief one is included. It's more of a book that analyzes Anne Boleyn: The Myth and Legends. how much do we actually know about her, and how much is actually true? As I've always been fascinated by Anne Boleyn, I was thrilled to dive into such a rich and well-researched account of her life and stories about her. However, people who were solely expecting a detailed biography on her will likely be disappointed.

The story of Anne Boleyn has been one of great fascination for me since I was young. She continues to wrap herself in further mystery with each potrayal and interpretation. THis book begins to look deeper into this woman with great sensitivity. As a Howard descendant, I am proud that Anne's life and death was not in vain.

Absolutely brilliant. This book will challenge how we think of Anne Boleyn and her times. Those who thought they new the character of Anne Boleyn or how history has painted her will be forced to rethink their own ideas, and see history's famous queen as much more than we have believed her to be. Truly inspiring and a must read for all Anne Boleyn lovers and haters.

Terrible narration of the Audible version! The reader has a heavy smoker's grating voice which detracts from the story.

In the forward the author mentions news stories that have held her attention. She flippantly refers to the Jon Benet Ramsey case as if this were just another tabloid scandal.

The author makes references to people and does not tell us who they are. She assumes we have already memorized every other book about Boleyn perhaps? I lost interest and did not continue listening to this book.

In this book, the few facts about Anne Boleyn that are indisputable are juxtaposed to the "mythology" that has built up around the second wife of Henry VIII. Henry's effort to erase her from histories' pages was almost, but not quite successful. The fact that we know so little about her enables modern historians to reshape Anne into whatever image they choose. Much of what IS known of Anne, turns out to be little more than gossip, hearsay, and out right slander propagated by Anne's worst enemies.

The first part of the book talks about Anne and Henry and what is known about their life together. The later part of the book details the image we have of Anne today, and how plays, movies, and "historical" fiction books have turned Anne into a shape shifter that reflects the ideals of whatever is culturally acceptable at the time.

Anne Boleyn is a hero to some, and a villain to others, yet she helped to shape the world as we know it, and was a major force in the reformation movement.

I didn't enjoy this book at all although the premise sounds very interesting. I've spotted so many errors! Here's one, very glaring, inaccuracy. While discussing the Hollywood adaptation of "The Other Boleyn Girl" based on Philippa Gregory's novel, Bordo says that "the actors, apparently, did little research beyond reading the novel", adding that "Natalie Portman admits to not `relating' to the character of Anne Boleyn, but appears to be so postmodern in her approach to history (perhaps due to her Harvard degree) that it didn't matter much: `You have to accept that all history is fiction...there are all these different versions'. After this comment, Bordo quotes Margaret George, who is a historical novelist. George says that "I think they are all a bunch of ignoramuses (in spite of Natalie's Harvard degree). Lazy. Un-intellectually curious." Very strong words!

I was very curious about the original statement by Natalie Portman because I couldn't believe that she had such an attitude towards history (yeah, I'm a fan). I found the link to interview quoted by Bordo (Gaynor Flynn, Girl.co.au) , and it turned out that Portman NEVER actually said that! When asked if she researched Anne Boleyn at all, Portman replied:

"I did a lot of research but I think you have to accept that all history is fiction. All history includes the bias of the teller and their own agendas. There are feminists who want to paint Anne one way. There are biographies from the period that painted her as a witch and said she had six fingers and she had cast a spell on the king. So there are all these different versions."

This is very different from what Bordo implies in her book! That puts her whole research into question.

"The Creation of Anne Boleyn" is a wasted potential. Bordo attempts to discredit respectable historians and their theories (Starkey, Bernard), but at the same time she doesn't fully back up her own opinions and is equally guilty of the biases of those she is accusing. She clearly lacks some academic background and is very haughty in her views but her confidence doesn't match her ability.

Absolutely brilliant. This book will challenge how we think of Anne Boleyn and her times. Those who thought they new the character of Anne Boleyn or how history has painted her will be forced to rethink their own ideas, and see history's famous queen as much more than we have believed her to be. Truly inspiring and a must read for all Anne Boleyn lovers and haters.

Terrible narration of the Audible version! The reader has a heavy smoker's grating voice which detracts from the story.

In the forward the author mentions news stories that have held her attention. She flippantly refers to the Jon Benet Ramsey case as if this were just another tabloid scandal.

The author makes references to people and does not tell us who they are. She assumes we have already memorized every other book about Boleyn perhaps? I lost interest and did not continue listening to this book.

I didn't enjoy this book at all although the premise sounds very interesting. I've spotted so many errors! Here's one, very glaring, inaccuracy. While discussing the Hollywood adaptation of "The Other Boleyn Girl" based on Philippa Gregory's novel, Bordo says that "the actors, apparently, did little research beyond reading the novel", adding that "Natalie Portman admits to not `relating' to the character of Anne Boleyn, but appears to be so postmodern in her approach to history (perhaps due to her Harvard degree) that it didn't matter much: `You have to accept that all history is fiction...there are all these different versions'. After this comment, Bordo quotes Margaret George, who is a historical novelist. George says that "I think they are all a bunch of ignoramuses (in spite of Natalie's Harvard degree). Lazy. Un-intellectually curious." Very strong words!

I was very curious about the original statement by Natalie Portman because I couldn't believe that she had such an attitude towards history (yeah, I'm a fan). I found the link to interview quoted by Bordo (Gaynor Flynn, Girl.co.au) , and it turned out that Portman NEVER actually said that! When asked if she researched Anne Boleyn at all, Portman replied:

"I did a lot of research but I think you have to accept that all history is fiction. All history includes the bias of the teller and their own agendas. There are feminists who want to paint Anne one way. There are biographies from the period that painted her as a witch and said she had six fingers and she had cast a spell on the king. So there are all these different versions."

This is very different from what Bordo implies in her book! That puts her whole research into question.

"The Creation of Anne Boleyn" is a wasted potential. Bordo attempts to discredit respectable historians and their theories (Starkey, Bernard), but at the same time she doesn't fully back up her own opinions and is equally guilty of the biases of those she is accusing. She clearly lacks some academic background and is very haughty in her views but her confidence doesn't match her ability.

I was disappointed in this rehash of Anne Boleyn’s life that quickly turned into a critique on every movie, book or television show ever written about her.

This was a waste of time and I really didn’t enjoy it. It came off like this woman was writing a thesis which can make for pretty dry reading.

The narrator was fine, I just ended up listening to this in three times speed to get through it quicker. No one sounds good at that speed.

There are much better books about Anne Boleyn out there. Pass this one by.

I have read a number of books on Tudor history, Anne Boleyn, and related topics. I have never read one before that so confuses fact and fiction and wastes so much time refuting fictional accounts. I'm always delighted to see someone synthesize, sum up, refute, and otherwise question other historical sources. But this book spends page after page "refuting" novels (Phillipa Gregory, Hilary Mantel), television shows, and movies, as if they should be looked on as primary or secondary factual sources. The author also tried (badly) to use 20th century jargon to appeal to her readers (I have NEVER heard someone describe Henry VIII as "pussy-whipped). I wouldn't spend ten cents on this piece of pop-culture garbage pretending to be serious research.

I hadn't anticipated such difficult reading when starting this book. I think, possibly, reading Carl Jung might be easier! Good grief! I wanted more info into Anne's life and how things got to where they are now, but this is written like stereo instructions!!! I am intelligent, well-read and have a vast array of genres under my belt but this writer seems to be bent on trying to impress her readers with the biggest, oldest and longest words ever written. I got about 1/4 of the way through and it is so dry I had to give up. Doesn't the author realize that, along with descriptions and legends changing over time, in general people are "dumbing down?" Ugh. Get off the high horse of 13-letter words and make your book interesting and -dare I say it?- maybe even pleasurable to read while learning something new?

This was a little too detailed for my interest. While I am interest in England's history, I am not a scholar by any means. This was not entertaining for me and I had a difficult time trying reading it. I gave up half way through and went on to something else.

I couldn't even finish this book. The author lost me when she wrote : "she wasn't a feminist, but just had a lot of meaningless sex, married someone she didn't love and had a nervous breakdown but still managed to see Anne of 1000 days at a movie theater in the 1960's." I wanted to read about Anne Boleyn, not about the author's life.

Author also harps about why Katherine, (the clinger ex-wife) wouldn't just fade into a convent and "stop tearing England apart." Okay here you go, and I don't even have a history degree: Catherine was a Spanish Princess, of much higher rank than Anne. Foreign princesses stood in as ambassadors of their country. At the time Henry wanted to go to war, with France as an ally,against Catherine's nephew Charles HRE. Catherine thought it a bad idea. (btw she was correct) Catherine would have had to admit that she lied to Henry about being a Virgin. As we can see that didn't do Catherine Howard any good. (lying got her killed). Also if Catherine invalidated her marriage, that would disinherit her own daughter Princess Mary. Mary would also be in danger of being killed by Anne Boleyn. Catherine's mom was Isabella of Castile. Isabella herself was confined to a tower and nearly killed by her half brother.

I would argue that Catherine of Aragon saved England from being crushed by Charles V and England's feckless "ally" France. Don't even get me started on her 2 dimensional view of Sir Thomas More who she calls a murderer. Back in the day, it was treason against the King if you practiced protestantism. Sir Thomas More would later refuse to sign the oath to King Henry and be beheaded. (it was a crime against the state to go against the king in matters of religion)

Thanks to the hugely successful novels of Philippa Gregory and the tv series "The Tudors", many people feel that they know who Anne Boleyn was. Even know, 500 years after her execution, people have strong opinions about her. Personally, I have never encountered someone who was neutral about her. (Ask any woman who has ever had a man leave her for another woman. Chances are, she is not going to think highly of her.) In her book, Susan Bordo attempts to separate fact from myth. It's a noble task, but one that Bordo ultimately fails to complete. After reading this, I didn't feel that I had learned anything new about Anne Boleyn. Even the revelation that Anne was not the raven-haired vixen she is usually portrayed is not new to anyone who has read the numerous biographies about her.

One thing that is interesting is that Bordo argues that many of the historical accounts of Anne were written by her enemies and therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt. This is true, but even enemies are capable of reporting the truth. (Think back to the claims of Richard III being a hunchback. For years, several scholars dismissed this as trash talk but his enemies, but the recent excavation of his skeleton proves beyond doubt that he DID in fact suffer from severe scoliosis.) Also, viewing Anne as a pre-feminist is a little tricky. There is an argument to be made that Anne was controlled by men her entire life including her extremely ambitious father whose lot in life certainly improved once she became the king's mistress. Also, nearly all credible accounts confirm she was pretty vile to the long-suffering Katherine of Aragon and Princess Mary.

Ultimately, this book left me lacking. I was hoping for a better portrait of Anne Boleyn and did not find it here. Still, parts of it are interesting esp. Anne's resurrection in pop culture.

While I don't doubt Bordo's scholarship, this work is unnecessarily disrespectful to the work of other historians and thus suffers under the weight of its own self-importance. I was also shocked to read a historical text using such vulgar language as referring to Henry VIII as being allegedly "pussy-whipped." I actually had to double check that the book had a reputable publisher.