The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

A riveting work of historical detection revealing that the origin of Wonder Woman, one of the world's most iconic superheroes, hides within it a fascinating family story--and a crucial history of twentieth-century feminism

Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator. Beginning in his undergraduate years at Harvard, Marston was influenced by early suffragists and feminists, starting with Emmeline Pankhurst, who was banned from speaking on campus in 1911, when Marston was a freshman. In the 1920s, Marston and his wife, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, brought into their home Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most influential feminists of the twentieth century. The Marston family story is a tale of drama, intrigue, and irony. In the 1930s, Marston and Byrne wrote a regular column for Family Circle celebrating conventional family life, even as they themselves pursued lives of extraordinary nonconformity. Marston, internationally known as an expert on truth--he invented the lie detector test--lived a life of secrets, only to spill them on the pages of Wonder Woman.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a tour de force of intellectual and cultural history. Wonder Woman, Lepore argues, is the missing link in the history of the struggle for women's rights--a chain of events that begins with the women's suffrage campaigns of the early 1900s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later.

This edition includes a new afterword with fresh revelations based on never before seen letters and photographs from the Marston family's papers.

With 161 illustrations and 16 pages in full color

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) was an American politician, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, holding the post from March 1933 to April 1945. She made Gallup's list of People that Americans Most Widely Admired in the 20th Century, and Time's The 25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century.

Jill Lepore is the Kemper Professor of American History at Harvard and a staff writer at the New Yorker. Her books include The Name of War (1998), which won the Bancroft Prize; New York Burning (2005), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history; The Story of America (2012), which was short-listed for the PEN Literary Award for the Art of the Essay; Book of Ages (2013), a finalist for the National Book Award; and The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014). Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. In 2012, she was named a Harvard College Professor, in recognition of distinction in undergraduate teaching.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780385354042
ISBN 10	0385354045
Title	The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Author	Jill Lepore
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Knopf Publishing Group
Year published	2014-10-28
Number of pages	432
Prizes	Winner of ALA Notable Books (Nonfiction) 2015, Short-listed for Locus Awards (Nonfiction) 2015
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.