* The first biography of `Amazing' Grace Hopper *Based on both archival material and interviews with friends, colleagues and family *A fascinating overview of the beginnings of the computer age When Grace Hopper retired as a rear admiral from the US Navy in 1986, she was the first woman restricted line officer to reach flag rank and, at the age of seventy-nine, the oldest serving officer in the Navy. A mathematician by training who became a computer scientist, the eccentric and outspoken Hopper helped propel the Navy into the computer age. She also was a superb publicist, yet in spite of all the attention she received, until now`Amazing' Grace has never been the subject of a full biography. Kathleen Broome Williams looks at Hopper's entire career, from the time she joined the WAVES and was sent in 1943 to work on the Mark I computer at Harvard to her achievements in commercial computing after the war, when she gained fame for her part in the creation of COBOL, and her recall to active duty at the Pentagon in 1967- a `temporary' appointment that lasted for nineteen years. Based on extensive interviews with colleagues and family and on archival material never before examined, this biography not only illuminates Hopper's pioneering accomplishments in a field that came to be dominated by men, it provides a fascinating overview of computing from its beginnings in World War II to the late 1980s.