Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II

by Liza Mundy

Her shyness made teaching hard for her. Ruth had many objections to teaching, chief among them that it paid so badly—she called it a “respectable way of starving to death”—but also because she disliked being the center of attention.

It was the first time many of the women had spent time in a bona fide workplace—apart from a classroom—and they discovered what workplaces are and have been since the dawn of time: places where one is annoyed and thwarted and underpaid and interrupted and underappreciated.