The Secret History of Wonder Woman

By: Jill Lepore

Narrated by: Jill Lepore

A riveting work of historical detection revealing that the origins of one of the world’s most iconic superheroes hides within it a fascinating family story - and a crucial history of 20th-century feminism.

Wonder Woman, created in 1941, is the most popular female superhero of all time. Aside from Superman and Batman, no superhero has lasted as long or commanded so vast and wildly passionate a following. Like every other superhero, Wonder Woman has a secret identity. Unlike every other superhero, she has also has a secret history.

Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator. Beginning in his undergraduate years at Harvard, Marston was influenced by early suffragists and feminists, starting with Emmeline Pankhurst, who was banned from speaking on campus in 1911, when Marston was a freshman. In the 1920s, Marston and his wife, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, brought into their home Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most influential feminists of the 20th 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.

©2014 Jill Lepore (P)2014 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Lepore restores Wonder Woman to her rightful place as an essential women’s rights icon in this dynamically researched and interpreted, spectacularly illustrated, downright astounding work of discovery that injects new zest into the history of feminism." ( Booklist)

"Wonder Woman, feminist hero, was the creation of a husband and wife who led, on the surface, average existences. Behind the mask, however, they had extraordinarily unconventional lives. It takes Harvard professor and New Yorker writer Lepore to dig into the complicated story behind the lasso (of truth), and forgive me for sounding like Upworthy, but it’s true: what she uncovers will shock you. Let’s just say that Wonder Woman’s S&M subtext was there for a reason." ( Flavorwire)

The most annoying reading

The author read the book and she has such an annoying voice. Her voice was high C or raspy.
Terrible!

The story is fantastic.

Great job with storytelling. Pro narrator would have been a better choice. All & All I would highly recommend this book. :)

A captivating portrayal of history

I will not soon be forgetting the important dates in history that is so artfully correlated with the story of wonder woman and women's suffrage.

Shocked & Appalled!

Was not a book I expected to expose the vial history of sexism's. I now understand why Wonder Woman was resently nominated as woman of the year. Before this book, it seemed both ludicrous & utterly insulting to women.

The Narration Almost Ruined it for Me.

This book covers the history leading up to the creation of Wonder Woman through a lens of feminism; if you are looking for an extensive history of the comic character you must look elsewhere.

Yes, we learn about the life of William Moulton Marston, warts and all, but it is by no means a biography of him alone.

At times I felt a bit lost in the maze as the book went far afield of the comics industry. However, the text did provide an extensive background for the times and people that created Wonder Woman, though I felt the conclusion to be a bit vague.

My key gripe is the narration of the book, which is by the author. At times it seemed to be read in an endless monotone. At other times she read some passages in a mocking tone. The theatrics hit a high note (or perhaps a low one) when she frantically reads Marston's instructions to his artist concerning various bits of bondage which seemed to flourish in Wonder Woman's early adventures. This was the moment I almost stopped listening.

The narration makes this bookl hard to listen to. The material would be better served with a different narrator.

Slow start into insanity

The story behind Wonder Woman takes a long time to get setup with the rather extensive background provided - but it's necessary to get to the story itself. There's a lot of psychological background to the men who come up with Wonder Woman. The character couldn't be created today because even by today's standards he's a bit of an eccentric crazy guy...

reading not the best, but excellent book

narrator definitely not the best. but the book and it's message are important and need to reach more people.

Feminism

As much as a history of how Wonder Woman came about, there is as much (if not more) on the women's movement of the early 20th century. It's not a topic that I knew well, so the information was a nice bonus; it felt like I was getting two books for the price of one!

I was surprised to find a print copy in my little town's library, so I took a day to go through and look at all the pictures it includes. But for the most part, the author here describes so many of them well that you won't miss context with the audio edition.

Comparing to the Prof. Marston and the Wonder Women, unlike the movie, I didn't find this book spending ample time on the details of their sexual escapades, but more about how they worked out their polyamorous lives together and Marston's drive for achievement and prestige.

The narrator wasn't so bad as other reviews are going on about. I would not hesitate to sit through another of her readings if it's on a subject that interests me.

I would recommend to anyone with an interest in Wonder Woman, Marston, or 20th century feminism.

Surprisingly engaging!

When I started this book I thought it would be boring, but it actually was pretty interesting. I learned a lot about the history of feminism and comics that I didn't know before, I became attached to the characters, and actually teared up a little at the end. I'd recommend this book to anyone, because the story is just weird enough that I think even people not particularly interested in feminism, history, or comics would still be entertained.
On a side note, Margaret Sanger was kind of a jerk.

Read, do not listen

I have to agree with the majority of reviewers - the book itself is fine, but the author's narration is AWFUL. I am actually interested in her new one-volume history of the United States, but cannot imagine listening to 30 hours of her when this nine-hour book was so excruciating. Unless the book is a memoir by someone so well-known that hearing a professional narrator would be disconcerting (i.e. Michelle Obama), authors should leave it to the pros.