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Decoding the Devil: Black Women Codebreakers and the Secret War Against Stalin's Bomb
Not yet published
Expected 2 Jun 26Top Secrettells the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units in the Army's intelligence agencies during World War II and the Cold War.
The result of a racial hiring quota, the Commercial Code unit freed the US from relying on British intelligence on the Axis powers’ trade relations and broke critical Japanese codes.
Led by William Coffee, the unit employed professors, college graduates, and other professionals who decrypted and translated messages from Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Portuguese.
After World War II, the Russian Plaintext Unit countered the growing threat of Soviet nuclear war. A top-secret operation, the all-Black unit worked under armed guard and was the Allies’ main source of intelligence on the Soviet atomic program from 1947 until the early 1950s.
Top Secret highlights the Black cryptologists’ critical contribution to national security in the civil rights era and promises to captivate readers with its fresh perspective on this pivotal moment in American history.
The result of a racial hiring quota, the Commercial Code unit freed the US from relying on British intelligence on the Axis powers’ trade relations and broke critical Japanese codes.
Led by William Coffee, the unit employed professors, college graduates, and other professionals who decrypted and translated messages from Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Portuguese.
After World War II, the Russian Plaintext Unit countered the growing threat of Soviet nuclear war. A top-secret operation, the all-Black unit worked under armed guard and was the Allies’ main source of intelligence on the Soviet atomic program from 1947 until the early 1950s.
Top Secret highlights the Black cryptologists’ critical contribution to national security in the civil rights era and promises to captivate readers with its fresh perspective on this pivotal moment in American history.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionWar
368 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication June 4, 2026
2 people are currently reading
3304 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Valentine
165 books78 followersSarah Valentine always wanted to be a writer. She began writing poetry in high school in Western Pennsylvania, where she also discovered Russian literature. She continued writing and translating poetry while her studies in Russian literature took her all over the world, including on a spectacular two-week journey on the Trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to Beijing.
After obtaining her Ph.D. from Princeton in 2007 she attended a Callaloo summer writing workshop for African American writers and realized she needed to write about something much closer to home: her struggle with racial identity and the troubling family secrets that surrounded it. This led to her award-winning essay, "When I Was White," which was anthologized in Waveform: 21st-Century Essays by Women, and her memoir by the same title.
Sarah has received numerous awards for her writing and scholarship, most notably a prestigious Lannan Foundation Writer's Fellowship in 2013. She has taught literature and creative writing at Princeton, University of California-Los Angeles, University of California-Riverside, and Northwestern University.
Sarah enjoys writing about topics related to black and mixed-race and African American identity, especially in historical settings. She loves murder mysteries, ghost stories, fairytales, folklore, and myth (and, of course, Russian literature) - anything that gives us a glimpse into another world. Sarah is endlessly curious, loves to travel, and believes the world is full of surprising, wonderful things to be discovered.
After obtaining her Ph.D. from Princeton in 2007 she attended a Callaloo summer writing workshop for African American writers and realized she needed to write about something much closer to home: her struggle with racial identity and the troubling family secrets that surrounded it. This led to her award-winning essay, "When I Was White," which was anthologized in Waveform: 21st-Century Essays by Women, and her memoir by the same title.
Sarah has received numerous awards for her writing and scholarship, most notably a prestigious Lannan Foundation Writer's Fellowship in 2013. She has taught literature and creative writing at Princeton, University of California-Los Angeles, University of California-Riverside, and Northwestern University.
Sarah enjoys writing about topics related to black and mixed-race and African American identity, especially in historical settings. She loves murder mysteries, ghost stories, fairytales, folklore, and myth (and, of course, Russian literature) - anything that gives us a glimpse into another world. Sarah is endlessly curious, loves to travel, and believes the world is full of surprising, wonderful things to be discovered.
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