cover image Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond

Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond

John Cork. ABRAMS, $40 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-4302-5

Since Ian Fleming wrote Casino Royale in 1953, Bond girls have been quintessential American sex symbols. Sexy, dazzling and self-assured, the character has been ogled by men and lambasted by feminists in all of its incarnations. D'Abo, who played Kira Milovy in the James Bond film The Living Daylights, and Cork (co-author of James Bond: The Legacy) walk readers through over 50 years of Bond girl history in this alluring volume, which celebrates the character as a role model and as a groundbreaking achievement in film. As Cork explains,""women like this had simply never been seen in films before."" The authors offer summaries and studies of every Bond film, emphasizing the Bond girl's role in each one, and share quotes from Bond girls such as Ursula Andress, Halle Berry, Honor Blackman and Jane Seymour. Using fantastic photos, analytical discussion and primary source material, the authors show how far the Bond girl has come since the world became enamored with the first iconic image of her rising out of the sea wearing a bikini with a knife strapped on to it.