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Reviews tagging 'War'
Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy
7 reviews
kirstencholewa's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, and War
Moderate: Death, Racism, Abortion, and Pregnancy
Minor: Homophobia, Mental illness, and Antisemitism
inirac's review against another edition
4.0
Moderate: Death, Xenophobia, Lesbophobia, and War
clarxvizconde13's review
5.0
Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Sexism, and War
Moderate: Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Pregnancy, and Lesbophobia
percys_panda_pillow_pet's review against another edition
4.25
While Mundy occasionally leans into a romanticized look at the time period and the American military might, she doesn't shy away from chipping at that view and really opening the reader up to the reality of another World War of this magnitude. As well as showing the levels of discrimination that were happening in that time period, especially to women. Though I disagreed with the balance of this romantic view and the reality throughout the book, I cannot deny that she did a great job with her research.
I think one of my bigger gripes about the book was the omission of the names of the all Black code breakers that were in Arlington Hall, as well as there wasn't as much about people of color, especially women of color. The author does point out in a few places that Black women were not allowed to enlist into WAVES or WACS and talks about how when scouting for potential codebreakers, the Army and Navy only wanted (paraphrasing) "women whose allegiances would not be swayed" aka white women. But I wanted a little bit more about this aspect of recruitment, as I feel like that is something important to focus on when you are talking about an already marginalized group. I was really disappointed that, even though this was about women code breakers and the all Black code breaker group was almost all women as well, none of them were named. Even if the author couldn't find this information, I still felt it important to make note of.
Overall, I definitely felt that this was an engaging and interesting book to read. It had a good casual tone throughout that didn't present the information in an overly dry manner so it was fairly easy to stay engaged. I only had a harder time reading it as I took some breaks when the material was more somber due to the nature of war. I would recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about the (white) women of America during World War II or learning about the beginning of intense code-breaking in America and what became eventually the NSA.
Graphic: Body shaming, Death, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Violence, Xenophobia, and War
Moderate: Bullying, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Suicide, Antisemitism, Grief, Abortion, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Ableism, Confinement, Vomit, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Car accident, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Alcohol
creativelifeofliz's review
5.0
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Grief, and War
Moderate: Body shaming, Antisemitism, Alcohol, Colonisation, and Classism
jmross10's review against another edition
3.0
Mundy does a good job discussing how recruiting was done, the responsibilities and challenges faced by these women, how they were integrated, and how they were eventually removed from their military positions. In several cases, she was able to speak with women from these units and wove their life stories into the overarching narrative which helps the reader form closer bonds to the content.
However, I feel the story was bogged down by poor organization of the information. It is separated into sections (that are vague dividers) but there is so much jumping around the timeline that it felt chaotic and unnecessarily drawn out. I know this is a very hard story to tell chronologically because so much was happening at once but that seemed to be the intent at the beginning and then was completely abandoned towards the middle.
All this to say, if the book were a bit more concise I probably would have rated higher. That was not the case though and there were aspects that felt a bit unnecessary, further dragging out a narrative that lost its steam about half way through.
Moderate: Death, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Antisemitism, Grief, Abortion, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and War
cammiem8's review against another edition
4.25
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, and War