So far I’m keeping up with all the things I need to do in August. I’m moving right along on the packing, the writing, the setting up of moving day and utilities for my new apartment, and the furniture shopping. There’s still a lot to do: I’m pretty much ignoring the Massachusetts section of the bar which I’m supposed to take on my own some time this month (surprise! Another test!), and I have a bunch of people I’d like to see before I move. But in the meantime, we are speeding through the books I read in June. Soon we’ll be into July, which seems a more acceptable level of behind—as long as it’s still August.
The second-to-last book I read in June was Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy.
Side note: Has anyone else noticed a pattern of subtitles for nonfiction starting with “the untold story of?” I’ve now read three books with subtitles like that this year, and it’s starting to feel redundant.
Anyway, Code Girls tells the story of the hundreds of women recruited during World War II to break codes for the army and navy. They were recruited from all over the country, from colleges and universities, and from jobs as teachers, secretaries, and housewives. The book follows several groups of these women through their training as code breakers and work on the Japanese codes and of course the German Enigma.
This was a great book. I really enjoyed delving deep into the code breaking machine of World War II and the lives of all these women. It was really impressive, particularly because these women never spoke of their experiences, and their stories are just coming out now.
my one complaint about the book is that it followed too many women. While I enjoyed seeing the broader picture and the variety of jobs women had in the code breaking machine for the army and the navy, I couldn’t keep them all straight in my head. this made it hard to become really invested in these women. On the other hand, if you treat the book as more of a history of the code breaking operations of the U.S. during WWII than the stories of these women’s lives and work during the war, it’s less disappointing. Though based on the subtitle, that isn’t what the author intended this book to be.
On the whole, though, I found this book fascinating, and I would definitely recommend for anyone interested in spies or World War II.