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ruth_in_calif 's review for:
The Secret History of Wonder Woman
by Jill Lepore
This is an amazing book. Written by a historian. Let me preface by saying that I have never liked reading history books and only read this because it was highly recommended to me by someone whose opinion I value.
This books is not only about the origins of the Wonder Woman comic book, but also encompasses the American history of Woman's Suffrage, the fight of women to gain legal access to birth control, the rise of feminism, as well as the general fight over the years to "break out of the chains" of society's construct of who women are "supposed to be" and who men are "supposed to be". Unlike most history books I have read (or been forced to read), the author really lets you get into the personalities of the subjects. The most shocking thing I read in this book is what one judge said as he sentenced a woman to jail for giving birth control information to other women (and many of the other women had testified that they had requested this information after having already had 8 or 9 babies). The judge said that "If a woman is not willing to die in childbirth, then she should never have sex".
I knew a little (very little) about this history, but this book brought it into the present for me, and also showed me how much we still have to keep fighting for equality, since so many of these ideas are still held by many people.
This books is not only about the origins of the Wonder Woman comic book, but also encompasses the American history of Woman's Suffrage, the fight of women to gain legal access to birth control, the rise of feminism, as well as the general fight over the years to "break out of the chains" of society's construct of who women are "supposed to be" and who men are "supposed to be". Unlike most history books I have read (or been forced to read), the author really lets you get into the personalities of the subjects. The most shocking thing I read in this book is what one judge said as he sentenced a woman to jail for giving birth control information to other women (and many of the other women had testified that they had requested this information after having already had 8 or 9 babies). The judge said that "If a woman is not willing to die in childbirth, then she should never have sex".
I knew a little (very little) about this history, but this book brought it into the present for me, and also showed me how much we still have to keep fighting for equality, since so many of these ideas are still held by many people.