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Bound With These Titles
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Summary
Summary
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." --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 Enigma--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.
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
The wife of the groundbreaking cryptanalyst William Friedman finally gets her due as equal partner in their pioneering codebreaking work over 30 years.While her husband was long treated by the National Security Agency as the "founder of the science of modern American cryptology," it was the partnership with his wife, Elizebeth, that drove the two to brilliant heights in the field. Journalist Fagone (Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America, 2013, etc.) does a bang-up research effort in unearthing the true story of this humble Midwestern codebreaker, who often gave her husband the credit while her own work (and much of his) had to remain in secrecy because of concerns of national security. However, the sexism of the time would also play a role in how her work was undervalued and underreported; as the author notes, "when powerful men started to tell the story [e.g., FBI director J. Edgar Hoover], they left her out of it." A remarkable meeting of the minds occurred when Elizebeth, a recent college graduate, was introduced to William, a mild-mannered geneticist, at the wealthy Chicago businessman George Fabyan's fabulous Riverbank "laboratory" in Geneva, Illinois, in 1916. Elizebeth had been hired to figure out the cipher in Shakespeare's First Folio that was supposed to reveal its author as Francis Bacon, and while she lost faith in the project, she found she had a knack for code-breaking. With the war escalating, she and William led the "Riverbank Department of Ciphers," fed by a stream of encrypted messages from Washington, D.C. Over time, they developed into a fine-tuned team, and Fagone explains without arduous technicality how the process workedthen pen and paper, without machines. Between the wars, the two wrote books, and Elizebeth helped crack messages from rumrunners for the Coast Guard. World War II brought the challenges of breaking Magic and Enigma, among other astounding achievements across the globe. An engaging resurrection of a significant player in the world of cryptology. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Fans of forgotten history, take note. Fagone (Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America, 2013) has found a twentieth-century story that reads more like a thriller than nonfiction. Furthermore, Elizebeth Smith Friedman's life has all the hallmarks of a Hollywood hit, and she is long overdue for the limelight. One of the greatest cryptologists of all time, she started her career in 1917, working for a mercurial millionaire who sought to prove that a hidden code exists in Shakespeare's works that reveals Francis Bacon as their true author. After meeting an equally gifted code-breaking genius on that project, William Friedman, the man who became the father of the National Security Agency, the two broke German codes in WWI. Then, as a married couple working for the government, Elizebeth unraveled cyphers created by rumrunners and gangsters during Prohibition, then moved on to undermine the Nazis. She never sought the spotlight, and as others, notably J. Edgar Hoover, took credit for her achievements, she was forced by national security requirements to remain silent. Riveting, inspiring, and rich in colorful characters, Fagone's extensively researched and utterly dazzling title is popular history at its very best and a book club natural.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Two forces set Elizebeth Friedman on the path to success: her love of literature and her fear of being ordinary. The first led her to the Newberry Library in Chicago to see a rare copy of William Shakespeare's First Folio. There, a librarian introduced her to a rich, eccentric stranger named George Fabayan. Against her sound judgment, Friedman accepted an unusual assignment at Fabayan's laboratory of decrypting Shakespeare's works. Friedman met her husband, William, at the laboratory and they eventually became two of the world's top cryptologists. William and Elizebeth solved some of the toughest crimes and military intelligence challenges of the 20th century. Fagone, editor for the Huffington Post Highline, records the pair's accomplishments, trials, and love affair, taking care to ensure that Elizebeth finally receives the recognition she deserves. The impressive endnotes will prove useful to researchers who wish to further explore the contributions of female codebreakers. VERDICT Fans of Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures and Andrew Hodges's Alan Turing: The Enigma will enjoy this carefully researched story of a smart and loyal but overlooked woman. [See Prepub Alert, 1/23/17.]-Beth -Dalton, Littleton, CO © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Author's Note: Prying Eyes | p. xi |
| Part I Riverbank | p. 1 |
| Chapter 1 Fabyan | p. 3 |
| Chapter 2 Unbelievable, Yet It Was There | p. 21 |
| Chapter 3 Bacon's Ghost | p. 37 |
| Chapter 4 He Who Fears Is Half Dead | p. 63 |
| Chapter 5 The Escape Plot | p. 93 |
| Part II Target Practice | p. 117 |
| Part III The Invisible War | p. 175 |
| Chapter 1 Gradmother Died | p. 177 |
| Chapter 2 Magic | p. 209 |
| Chapter 3 The Hauptsturmführer and the Funkmeister | p. 223 |
| Chapter 4 Circuit 3-N | p. 249 |
| Chapter 5 The Doll Lady | p. 283 |
| Chapter 6 Hitler's Lair | p. 307 |
| Epilogue: Girl Cryptanalyst and All That | p. 327 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 343 |
| Notes | p. 347 |
| Index | p. 429 |