Decoding the devil : Black women codebreakers and the secret war against Stalin's bomb / Sarah Valentine.

By:

Valentine, Sarah, 1977- [author.]

Material type: Text

TextPublisher: New York, NY : HarperCollins Publishers, [2026]Copyright date: ©2026Edition: First editionDescription: xxxii, 327 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:

text

Media type:

unmediated

Carrier type:

volume

ISBN:

9780063305472
006330547X

Other title:

Black women codebreakers and the secret war against Stalin's bomb
Women codebreakers and the secret war against Stalin's bomb

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Biographies.

LOC classification:

UB290 .V35 2026

Summary: "As groundbreaking as Code Girls and Hidden Figures, this is the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units racing to unlock Stalin's atomic secrets in the face of a rapidly expanding Soviet nuclear threat at the dawn of the Cold War"-- Provided by publisher.Summary: Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on the US's most dangerous nuclear rival. The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division--The Plantation. Despite wage discrimination, grueling hours, strict quotas, and harsh conditions, the Plantation's 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in United States' Soviet intelligence even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War thirty years later. In this thrilling history, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time. Decoding the Devil pays long overdue tribute to these little-known Black cryptologists' critical contributions to national security during the civil rights era, and offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War and American heroes of color.

List(s) this item appears in: New Adult Nonfiction

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Shelving location	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Adult Book	Phillipsburg Free Public Library	Adult Non-Fiction	New Books	940.5486 VAL	Available		36748002652669

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

As groundbreaking as Code Girls and Hidden Figures, this is the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units racing to unlock Stalin's atomic secrets in the face of a rapidly expanding Soviet nuclear threat at the dawn of the Cold War.

The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division--The Plantation. Despite wage discrimination, grueling hours, strict quotas, and harsh conditions, the Plantation's 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in United States' Soviet intelligence even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War thirty years later.

In this thrilling history, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time. Decoding the Devil pays long overdue tribute to these little-known Black cryptologists' critical contributions to national security during the civil rights era, and offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War and American heroes of color.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 310-327).

"As groundbreaking as Code Girls and Hidden Figures, this is the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units racing to unlock Stalin's atomic secrets in the face of a rapidly expanding Soviet nuclear threat at the dawn of the Cold War"-- Provided by publisher.

Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on the US's most dangerous nuclear rival. The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division--The Plantation. Despite wage discrimination, grueling hours, strict quotas, and harsh conditions, the Plantation's 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in United States' Soviet intelligence even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War thirty years later. In this thrilling history, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time. Decoding the Devil pays long overdue tribute to these little-known Black cryptologists' critical contributions to national security during the civil rights era, and offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War and American heroes of color.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

Writer, educator, and translator Valentine follows her memoir, When I Was White (2019), with the eye-opening true story of the contributions, careers, and lives of Black women codebreakers during WWII and the Cold War. "The Plantation" was the demeaning name for the under-resourced, poorly ventilated, and segregated areas where Black people--primarily women--were tucked away as they handled tremendous amounts of cryptographic data for "the Agency" (the forerunner of today's NSA) at Arlington Hall and later, at Fort Meade. This situation created a separate and unequal version of what Liza Mundy describes in Code Girls (2017). Valentine profiles several of the creative, hardworking, intelligent, college-educated women who came to work in these segregated divisions in the midst of WWII, the Red Scare, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights movement. Jane Crow policies hindered their personal advancement and were also a tremendous waste of talent for the Agency. The glossaries at the end that explain technical and historical terms are especially helpful. Like Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures (2016), Valentine's book illuminates the important contributions of a historically ignored group.