Carla Kaplan

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Review: Jill Lepore's 'Secret History of Wonder Woman'

Carla's review of Jill Lepore's Secret History of Wonder Woman was published in this week's New York Times Sunday Book Review.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a richly interwoven and illustrated dual biography of Wonder Woman and [her creator] Marston (Marston gets more than half the book), which suggests looking more closely at the 1940s as foundational to the formation of American feminism and thinking more broadly about feminism's pantheon of founding figures. Building on her recent turn toward neglected women's stories, Lepore offers the Marston/Wonder Woman story as a vital "missing link" in the history of women's rights, a movement she believes "floundered" from both infighting and a poor sense of its own conflicted history.

Read the full review