Book Review: Code Girls

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Codebreakers Who Helped Win World War II
Liza Mundy
History, biography

You might think that Code Girls would be, basically, Hidden Figures with white women and cryptography. And you would be, basically, correct. If that sounds like the kind of book you'd like, you'll like Code Girls.

Of the two books, Code Girls is better-written. It by no means avoids Hidden Figures's gee-whiz-weren't-these-women-swell approach, but it dials it back considerably. Mundy touches on the lives of many women, but she wisely anchors Code Girls around just one (Dot Braden)--although it's still often hard to remember who was who. She's at her best with vivid biographical details and lively character portraits.

Less happily, Mundy does a poor job of describing what code-breaking actually entailed. She desperately needed at least a few simple examples of the techniques she's describing (there are no examples at all). I could follow along because I'm fairly well versed in basic cryptography and cryptographic history; if you're not, you may find some paragraphs frustratingly vague. In terms of technical detail, Mundy stops at the level of saying "It's amazing what you can do with math," or words to that effect.

It matters. Without these details, Code Girls is reduced to a series of People Magazine-style profiles. Mundy wants to establish, not just that women worked in cryptography, but that their contributions were more than drudge work--that, in fact, they made real intellectual leaps. Without describing the codes, she's reduced to hauling out a few vague anecdotes and telling us they were, like, really important. As with Hidden Figures, I'm ready to admire these women--but I'd like to admire them for what they achieved. Mundy's book is a good quick read, but no more than that.

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Two good books about cryptography are David Kahn's classic The Codebreakers and Simon Singh's The Code Book. For an unforgettable portrait of cryptographers at work--and the consequences--see Walter Lord's Incredible Victory.