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 … 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.
more
The book was recommended to me so I tried it. Slow and stuffed with extraneous stuff.
VERY EDUCATIONAL
It gets extremely detailed but it is a fascinating story on many levels – what she and her husband did for the world, the personal cost, the fact that a woman in that age had such a powerful influence but wasn’t given credit. It’s really a good book – long but worth it.
What an incredible story about a woman I’d never heard of before! I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys cryptography and puzzles, but also just plain adventure.
a little difficult to hold my interest, but extremely informational as far as code writing, intelligence agencies etc got their start. Difficult to understand the wealthy man in Illinois whose searches seemed sometimes off the chart.
Smart Biography that read like a novel.
Elizebeth ( with an e not an a )Friedman and her husband William were 2 young Americans who, before 1920, discovered patterns and techniques that led to modern cryptology. They became the best codebreakers the U S had ever seen. This was before the CIA and NSA existed, and the FBI was still forming.
These were paper and pencil days: no computers of course. Over the years and well into WWII both Friedman’s were instrumental to the US in clandestine capacities. William became famous; despite Elizabeth ‘s equal input, she was always an unknown. She was a wife, a mother, and worked in some capacity for the coast guard but nobody spoke about what she did or understood the gravity of her importance because she never told anyone.
It wasn’t until the 1970’s that the story started to come out; the author of this book , Jason Fagone, started reading about Elizebeth in 2014, became fascinated, and we, the readers are all the better for it. This is a fine story, one you won’t want to miss.
Very interesting well researched information. Great to read the great ability of this couple to break codes.
Information little known by my generation of code breakers and the early days of brain power not computer power to break or make codes.
I loved this book! I usually enjoy fiction more than nonfiction but decided to buy this book because of other reviews. I have no talent for solving codes and no real interest in this subject but this book read in a way that required none. From the first until the end it smooth and seamless. At times I’d read and could hardly put it down. If you enjoy mysteries and history, this is the book for you. A true mystery with real people and real situations. To repeat … I loved this book!
So glad to read about our code breaking…..so much has been made of the Bletchley Park group. So much more was happening. Like the code-breakers in Poland right before the German invasion. When Germany invaded Poland, their work was give to…..guess who….Bletchley Park. It was, after all, a WORLD WAR. So little is said about the War in the Pacific for instance. Our young men were posted all over the World….not just Europe. I even spoke to a man recently who served down at the southern-most tip of South America…..watching for German subs.
Wow. Life is always more complex than fiction, and this account of the history of America’s greatest code-breakers is a good example. Tells not only the story of the married couple and particularly the wife, but also a sad account of the discrimination of the times, the whimsical power of wealth and of a ungentle government.
Fascinating true story!
I have rarely read a biography that has kept me so enthralled. Ms. Elizebeth Friedman was an amazing woman, and her story is so compelling. This woman was a genius as was her husband. Their abilities were mind boggling. Not a usual dry biography. Highly recommend.
An amazing visit into the real world past when war time codes were broken through brain power not computer power and a time when a woman’s brain was considered less capable than a man’s. So glad this amazing woman is getting the credit she deserves.
Excellent book! Gives you information about the woman who was brilliant and helped us win the wars.
Living in a husband’s shadow during times that the abilities of women were under-appreciated has hidden the achievements of more than one woman. Add to thar the secretive nature of Elizabeth Friedman’s work, and you get the fascinating story of a self-taught cryptologist married to a champion code breaker, William Friedman often working on projects they could not share with one another. Had she not donated her own work to a library where it was preserved and then perused by the author, there are pieces of her life which would have remained obscure. What wonder wrought by a woman whose life was touched by tragedy, sexism, harassment, prejudice, yet left a huge mark on America’s history.
So identified with the male-dominated world in which she worked and just amazed at how she made her own way in that world. A real hero and so glad her story has been brought forward
Important people I had never even heard about.
This was a very well-written and researched book, and a fascinating history of Elizebeth Friedman and William Friedman and their contributions to the field of code breaking during and between the World wars. This is one of the most entertaining and informative books I’ve read during the last year.