Liza Mundy

Liza Mundy is the author of four books including Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II. Published in 2017, Code Girls tells the story of more than 10,000 women who were recruited to break Axis codes, work that saved lives, shortened the war, and pioneered the computer and cybersecurity industries. The book was a New York Times best-seller, a Washington Post best-seller, and a Wall Street journal best-seller. It received rave reviews in 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.” She is working on a new book about women and espionage.

A former staff writer for the Washington Post, Mundy is also the New York Times-bestselling author of Michelle: A Biography, a 2008 biography of former First Lady Michelle Obama. She has appeared on The Colbert Report, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, MSNBC, CNN, C-Span, and National Public Radio shows including Weekend Edition, All Things Considered, the Diane Rehm Show, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. A former staff writer for the Washington Post, she is a senior fellow at New America, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank. She writes for publications including the Atlantic, Politico, and Smithsonian. She lives in Washington, D.C, equidistant from Arlington Hall, site of the US Army code-breaking operation during World War II, and the Navy’s site in northwest DC. At various points in her career she has worked full-time, part-time, all-night, at home, in the office, remotely, in person, on trains, in the car, alone, with other people, under duress, and while simultaneously making dinner.