Code Girls by Liza Mundy

The subtitle is The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II, and as is so often the case with the subtitles of non-fiction books, it pretty much sums up what the book is about. The "why now" of it is that it took advantage of recently declassified government documents to highlight the little-known work of the hundreds of women involved in cracking Japanese and German encryption to help bring WWII to a successful conclusion. We get a flavor of just how amazing the whole thing was, that women really had few opportunities in 1930's America, and yet some of them (a low percentage) went to college--the military recruited women studying language, math, and sciences and then trained them to work in teams and to crack codes. The work was demanding and stressful, and we see that through the telling of the stories of a few of them, down to the places they lived, the sacrifices they made, and what motivated them--they had brothers, boyfriends, and husbands who were in combat that they were working to help give them a strategic edge and survive the war. It is occasionally too detailed and long-winded, but overall is a fascinating story, and for many of these women, their days together working as code breakers were the most exciting and meaningful of their whole lives.