Lewis College of Human Sciences Assistant Professor of History Marie Hicks’s new book rose to the top of two categories in new releases on Amazon over the holiday weekend. Hicks’s book, Programmed Inequality, made it to number one in the Computing Industry History category, as well as number one in the Labor and Industrial Relations category owing to strong pre-order sales numbers. The book comes out in January from MIT Press.

Programmed Inequality looks at the history of women in British computing, and explains why the British computing industry faltered after a strong start. In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation discarded most of its trained technical labor force—simply because they were women. Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy and explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. It shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the 21st century.

For more information, visit the book’s website.