This book has clearly been researched to within an inch of its life, and it's paid off. Not only is it informative, it's also readable, which is something that not all investigative, historical nonfiction is. I'm forced to say that it's a little slow, and often seems more interested in the family life of Wonder Woman's creator than the comic itself - I would have liked to see more analysis of the early comic texts - but I wonder if that's a fair criticism. In my defense, the title of the book led me to expect a narrower focus, but in Lepore's defense the historical context of any creation is crucial to that creation, and by fully situating Wonder Woman in the culture and scholarship of its creator it becomes far easier to understand the development of the comic itself.

That creator, William Moulton Marston, is a fascinating character who comes across as something of a charlatan. It's clear that he's bright and well-educated, but he seems to be a bit dodgy in his scholarship, and a little too ready to take credit for the work of others... including the two women he has formed a polyamorous relationship with. One can give credit for his monomania regarding his own academic work without actually being convinced by that work, but admittedly that particular subjectivity had clearly left him with enormous blind spots regarding his pet theories of emotions and lie detection. His primary romantic partners - his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and their live-in lover Olive Byrne - are equally interesting, even if I'm sometimes left wondering what they see in him, as in many ways they are both plainly more competent. Perhaps it's charisma? Anyway, their secret relationship, which is primarily the "secret history" of the title, plays out against a backdrop of feminist activism in the first half of the twentieth century, and it's all tied together convincingly. The tracing of bondage in early feminist imagery, to its famous place in the comic, was particularly well done I thought, and certainly enlightening.