Decoding the Devil

Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on the US’s most dangerous nuclear rival.

The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division—The Plantation. Despite wage discrimination, grueling hours, strict quotas, and harsh conditions, the Plantation’s 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in United States’ Soviet intelligence even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War thirty years later.

In this thrilling history, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time. Decoding the Devil pays long overdue tribute to these little-known Black cryptologists’ critical contributions to national security during the civil rights era, and offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War and American heroes of color.

Sarah Valentine, Ph.D., is a widely published author and translator. In 2013 she was a Lannan Foundation Writers Fellow and has taught literature and creative writing at Princeton, University of California–Los Angeles, University of California–Riverside, and Northwestern University. In her memoir When I Was White, she recounts growing up in Pittsburgh as a mixed race African American in a white family who kept her identity a closely held secret. She lives in Pittsburgh.

• Publisher: Harper
  
• Publish Date: June 02, 2026
  
• Pages: 352
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Hardcover
  
• EAN/UPC: 9780063305472
• BISAC Categories: , Biography & Memoir, Politics, Society & Current Affairs