Wondrous women

20th: Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Knopf, 2014) tracks the World War II origin of the comic book super heroine to radical movements that grew during the World War I era. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s 1920 book, Woman and the New Race, was required reading in 1944 for a young woman brought in to write Wonder Woman scripts. Comic entrepreneur William Marston wrote, “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world. … As they develop as much ability for worldly success as they already have ability for love, they will clearly come to rule business and the Nation and the world,” ushering in an era of peace.

19th: Megan Marshall’s Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Houghton Mifflin, 2013) tells the story of America’s first female star journalist, but the book never comes alive. For example, in writing about Fuller’s work as a New York Tribune columnist, Marshall tells us about “the human interest reporting at which Margaret instinctively excelled,” but does not show us examples of excellence. Marshall, noting that Fuller wore leather gloves, quotes the criticism she received from early animal-rights proponent Mary Greeley, wife of Fuller’s boss Horace: “Skin of a beast”—but she misses Fuller’s witty reply to the silk-wearing Greeley, “Entrails of a worm.”

18th: Hannah More, the subject of Karen Swallow Prior’s Fierce Conviction (HarperCollins, 2014), wrote to John Newton in 1796 concerning her anti-poverty work, “One great benefit which I have found to result from our projects is the removal of the great gulf which has divided rich and poor in these country parishes, by making them meet together; whereas before, they hardly thought they were children of one common father.” More anticipated Charles Dickens’ critique of telescopic philanthropy, asking, “Is it not almost ridiculous to observe the zeal we have for doing good at a distance, while we neglect the little, obvious, every-day, domestic duties, which would seem to solicit our immediate attention?” For more on More, see my interview with Prior in WORLD’s Jan. 24 issue.

17th: Some historians have blamed the Salem witch trials of 1692 on hysterical women, but Emerson Baker’s A Storm of Witchcraft (Oxford, 2015) is a well-written, balanced narrative of Salem’s tragedy. Baker explains it as a “perfect storm” of governmental overreach resulting from political power struggles, reaction to a grim war with Indians, the arrival of a new charter, economic anxieties, leadership failures, and “conversion disorders” in which psychological upsets converted into physical afflictions. Baker overturns the assumption that backwardness and superstition led to the witch trials, and notes that leading scientists such as Robert Boyle were researching witchery: Boyle, trying to advance science beyond a naturalistic emphasis by studying the supernatural, contended in The Origine of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy (1666) that spirits and souls could interact with the physical world.

So, back to the future: The United States had witch hunts in recent decades aimed at preschool teachers accused of impossible things. Besides, the Soviet and Chinese Communist witch hunts of the past century, which led to the murder of millions, may have reduced the tendency of historians to view the Salem witch hunt of 1692, which led to 19 executions, as the nadir of history.

Short stops

The Bill James Handbook 2015 (Baseball Info Solutions, 2014) is once again an excellent and stimulating reference source from the creator of modern hardball’s statistical analysis. The bulk of the book contains the standard career stats of every active major league player through the end of the 2014 season but also some James innovations like Runs Created and Component ERA. Features display other unusual but helpful stats such as pitcher velocity by season, runs saved, manufactured runs, productive outs, home run robberies, win shares, and replay appeal successes and failures. —M.O.