Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... The Woman Who Smashed Codesby Jason Fagone
Work InformationThe Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone
   No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) stardustwisdom | Dec 31, 2023 |  ) Suem330 | Dec 28, 2023 | I guess it goes along with Elizebeth’s personality to not like the spotlight, but definitely think the title deceives the book’s tone. Doesn’t help I am also reading Lessons in Chemistry, which is about a different badass Elizabeth working in STEM in the 1950s lol. (  ) lavellemt | Dec 27, 2023 | What I liked very much was that the book read like a novel instead of a biography and got me immediately invested in the subject of the Friedmans and cryptography. Also, I have never been much of a WWII history-buff, but I must say that Fagone really got me interested in this part of the history. There were some minor things that I liked less. First Fagone described William Friedman as a brilliant man who batteled with depression, the fact that he then sometimes put him on the page as a whiny, needy little man felt therefore a little... harsch. Another thing is that I really liked Fagones writing style, but sometimes he felt the need to hype it up with "smashing codes" and his superlative awe for the scientific method. These moments just stood out and kept annoying me once every while. This was however one of the most fun biographies I've read so far! (  ) bramboomen | Oct 18, 2023 | Despite my obsession with the British female codebreakers of Bletchley Park, I knew less about the American side: we decrypted Engima! And defeated a bizarre secret South American-takeover plot! If I had one complaint it's that the book to some extent sidelined her husband, William Friedman. This bothers me not just because "The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies And Her Husband, the Brilliant Jewish Geneticist, Who Also Smashed Codes" is EVEN more likely to be mistaken for a Markov Chain generated specifically from Becca's Interests, but also, Elizebeth and William made clear that they saw themselves as equals and I think they would have preferred it that way. Nonetheless, this is a fascinating piece of history, well told by Fagone. ( ) settingshadow | Aug 19, 2023 | no reviews | add a review
DistinctionsNotable Lists
Biography & Autobiography.
History.
Politics.
Nonfiction.
HTML: National Bestseller NPR Best Book of the Year "Not all superheroes wear capes, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman should be the subject of a future Wonder Woman movie." â??The New York Times Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II. In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the "Adam and Eve" of the NSA, Elizebeth's story, incredibly, has never been told. In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation's history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler's Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigmaâ??and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life. Fagone unveils America's code-breaking history through the prism of Smith's life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence. Blending the lively pace and compelling detail that are the hallmarks of Erik Larson's bestsellers with the atmosphere and intensity of The Imitation Game, The Woman Who Smashed Codes is page-turning popular history at its finest No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)652.8092Technology Management and auxiliary services Writing: Materials, Typewriters CryptographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.12)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English
5