The Center
for Cryptologic History (CCH) announced on October 16 that Liza Mundy
will be the NSA/CSS Scholar-in-Residence for 2019-2020. The
Scholar-in-Residence program began in 1990, although it has been in caretaker
status since 2012.
The position has been occupied by a
distinguished academic or researcher who spends a year researching and writing
books and articles on unclassified topics of importance to the study of
cryptologic history. Past Scholars have included Dr. David Kahn, Dr. John
Ferris, Dr. Rebecca Ratcliff, and Dr. Craig Bauer. Their efforts have
resulted in a number of articles and noteworthy books in the field.
Mundy is the author of Code
Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II,
which was published by Hachette in 2017. Code Girls reveals
the major, untold story of 10,000 American women who decrypted signals
intelligence during World War II. Code Girls was both a New
York Times best seller and a Washington Post best
seller and has been translated into ten languages to date.
It received positive reviews in
numerous publications, including The Washington Post, The
New York Times Book Review, and Studies in Intelligence, which
said that “Code Girls pays tribute to an unsung group of
patriotic Americans who, more than seven decades later, are just now receiving
their due.” It has won awards, including “Best General Audience
Intelligence Book” of 2018 from the Association of Former Intelligence
Officers, which said that “Code Girls does for women of that
era what Hidden Figures did for African American women of the
1960s and Windtalkers did for the Native American code
communicators of World War II.”
A version for young readers was
published by Little, Brown in 2018. Mundy has written three other books,
including a bestselling biography of former First Lady Michelle Obama. She is
also a senior fellow at New America, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank.
In addition to researching and writing a book and a number of articles during her time as Scholar-in-Residence, Mundy will make presentations in CCH classes and in other venues around NSA, to include speaking at NSA’s Cryptologic History Symposium, 17-19 October 2019.
Source: NSA
By Loren Blinde
October 16, 2019
