This is an interesting deep dive into a piece of history that most people are not aware of. I certainly was not. This is the story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, lover of books, words, and Shakespeare. She accidentally stumbled into the world of cryptology and ended up kicking its ass! This book is compared to works by Erik Larson, though in my opinion it omits some of the rambling minutiae that makes me sometimes skim parts of Larson’s books. Ditto the comparison to Hidden Figures, a book that was really bogged down in dull detail. This book has a nice balance of detail and a narrative that moves along at a good pace.

Elizebeth Smith was from a small rural town in Indiana, born in a Quaker family. But she was different from the rest. While in Chicago looking for a job, she was recruited by the eccentric George Fabyan in 1916 to come to his scientific compound west of Chicago called Riverbank. She went and was assigned to work with Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup, whose life work was to prove that Frances Bacon was the real author behind the works of Shakespeare. The goal was to prove this by finding the hidden messages that Bacon allegedly left in the plays. This is how Elizebeth learned to read code and cipher. At Riverbank she met William Friedman, a biologist also employed by Fabyan. As they grow fond of each other, they also grow disillusioned with Fabyan and the Frances Bacon theory. They marry, escape Riverbank, and William joins the army. Elizebeth is recruited by the Coast Guard and eventually works to decode messages of alcohol and drug smugglers to thwart their attempts to bring goods into the US. Eventually, she and William separately work to crack Enigma machines used by the Nazis and coding machines used by the Japanese. All this, while raising two children and coping with and covering up her husband’s serious bouts of depression.

At its heart, this is a love story about the Friedman’s. They genuinely loved and supported each other. They each thought the other was brilliant. This is also a fascinating look into the history of spy organizations in the US and the birth of counterintelligence. It is also a story about sexism. Elizebeth was kept out of history both for security reasons and because she was a woman. A woman who was smarter than many of the men around her. However, it also seems like she had a very unassuming personality and was happy to be in the wings. She seemed to promote her husband ahead of herself without bitterness. The story is well-written, interesting, and moves at a nice pace. The author also provides some lessons in cryptology, the more complex of which were over my head. Overall, this is well done in-depth coverage of an important historical figure whose work is still important today.

The story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman and her husband William Friedman, who were pioneer cryptanalysts for the United States. Elizebeth came from a Quaker family in rural Indiana, William from a Jewish family in New York. Their meeting, which both at the time and in retrospect, seems to have been highly unlikely, was at a very strange household/research facility owned and operated by an eccentric millionaire, George Fabyan on his estate just outside Geneva, Illinois. Elizebeth (a graduate of Hillsdale College) was hired, in 1916, to work on his Shakespeare project—that was t try to prove that Francis Bacon actually wrote the plays and had left encrypted clues in the First Folio. But an extraordinary range of other projects were also being researched there.

William was, initially, doing genetic experiments on fruit flies. But fairly quickly they both discovered that they had a facility for deciphering secret messages. And they both quickly came to believe that the Bacon project was a dead end. And William fell in love, and they got married. They left Fabyan’s establishment, and fairly quickly found jobs in Washington-William as a military code and cipher expert during World Was I, and Elizebeth as doing similar work for the Customs office (deciphering messages exchanged by smugglers, and then bootleggers).

Probably their most important work came during World War II. They were working separately, and could rarely even discuss their work. Between them, though, they made a significant impact on Germany’s espionage and sabotage campaigns (in Elizebeth’s case, in South America).

This is a complex an interesting tail, and Fagone generally tells it well. He is not a particularly graceful writer, though the story is compelling enough that I mostly overlooked that aspect of the book (although things do drag occasionally). If anything is a persistent weakness, it is the description and discussion of the code-breaking work itself. That is a largely technical subject and not especially gripping. But it is a bit of a hole in the narrative.

Among the other people who have important places in the story, almost all come off well, appearing as dedicated, hard-working people doing, in some cases, dangerous jobs. One person, however, comes off very badly…J. Edgar Hoover. He appears as an ambitious attention and credit grabber is cares primarily for his own reputation and secondarily for that of the FBI.

As I was preparing to write these comments, I discovered a second recent book focusing on Elizebeth Friedman, G. Stuart Smith’s A life in Code: Pioneer Cryptanalyst Elizebeth Smith Friedman, published by McFarland in 2007. It’s considerably shorter than Fagone’s book (and also, oddly, more expensive). And the description of it (on Amazon) suggests that William’s part in the story is downplayed or ignored.

If you are at all interested in the part that decoding played in the war, Fagone’s book will, I think, be the place to start for American efforts. There’s also an extensive literature about the British efforts at Bletchley park, with which I am not familiar (although I can recommend Robert Harris’s Enigma, which, as a novel, probably plays a bit loosely with the facts).

Loved this. Learned a lot about the code breaking world and also the sacrifices made by two extraordinary people during World War II. Well worth reading and well written.

The book starts slowly but quickly grabs the readers' attention. This is the story of a woman, who with her husband, made a significant contribution to the science of code making and breaking. She served in the Coast Guard developing a US equivalent of the British Bletchley Hall.

Her story has been hidden under secrecy and intergovernmental rivalries. And buried under the shroud that often hid the accomplishments of brillant women through the ages.

Highly recommend this well researched, well written story of two world wars, smuggling and prohibition crime solving, and the ultimate in anti-Nazi crime prevention.

The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone is a remarkable true story about

Elizebeth Smith Friedman, an American cryptanalyst extraordinaire.

In 1916 Elizebeth Smith and William Friedman met in Geneva, Illinois at Riverbank Laboratories, a highly advanced campus that pioneered modern cryptography. Soon after they married, Elizebeth and William left Riverbank in response to government offers to break codes pertaining to national security.

As Elizebeth and William branched out into the world of codebreakers, or cryptanalysts, they found that together they could solve secret messages. To them it was fun; to the country they became a vital link toward America’s security. At first they worked together. Using graph paper and pencil, they invented new techniques that transformed the science of secret writing, known as cryptology. Then, for many years they worked separately. From 1920-1930 Elizebeth worked for the American Coast Guard deciphering codes sent by bootleggers and drug smugglers. During WWII, she worked for the Treasury Department deciphering radio codes, especially from Nazi agents working in South America. William became a US Army cryptographer who ran the research division of the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service. Naturally, their work involved knowing the various languages of the countries sending the messages—Spanish, German, French, Japanese.

The world has recognized William’s work in the decades following World War II. He wrote textbooks that trained generations of codebreakers. Those who knew them both often said that Elizebeth was the more brilliant one of the pair. What held her back from public recognition was, pure and simple, gender. For instance: When massive arrests were made as the result of her codebreaking efforts of smugglers, articles and reports expressed amazement that a woman could achieve such accomplishments.

The Woman Who Smashed Codes is a well-written, detailed account of scientific and mathematical achievement. But, more than that, it’s a fascinating story that spans two World Wars, and describes in exciting detail roles the Friedmans played during those many years. The book is rich in the different facets of cryptography, with many examples of codes and code breaking, the difference between codes and ciphers, etc. People who love puzzles will be fascinated by the many examples of codes and ciphers used and how they were “broken.” The book gives a fresh view of both World Wars and the various intelligence services that it took to combat them. Although Elizebeth lived in the shadow of her accomplished husband, she served her country admirably through her own impressive capabilities and expertise.

I don’t understand anything about codes. I very much admire someone who does though and golly Elizebeth understood them!! What I first admired about her in the book was that although she was a close contemporary in age to my own mother, and was brought up in a similar “Edwardian” world, she had the guts to go out and look for more than just a limited farm life. She persevered to go to college. Not that I am denigrating women in that age (or any) who didn’t/don’t choose to go but that is the kicker: to follow one’s “choice” and not limit one’s self. Although the age in which she lived limited her because of her womanhood, Elizebeth took as much out of it as she possibly could. A great lesson to anyone, male or female, who think they cannot burst their bonds.

Her biographer has been meticulous. I am amazed at what he was able to find, how he could write in such detail about someone’s life. This is a true gem of a biography. And that it is of a woman who, because of her work and her natural reticence, was so shrouded in mystery, makes it all the more surprising. It is also so crammed with facts, both mathematical and historical, that I think I can only remember a fraction.

For people who like biographies, this is, as I said, a gem. For people who are interested in what went on “behind the scenes” in Prohibition days and in World War 2, this is also a must-read. Why Prohibition? Because what Elizebeth did in cracking the early codes rum runners used during Prohibition set up modern electronic spying. And it also explains an interesting time in history too.

All in all, a somewhat heavy-in-data read but well worthwhile in learning about a fascinating woman and the times she lived in.

Very interesting to learn about Elizabeth Feidman, but it was too technical for many readers.

We read this in book club and had to just skip through the technical aspects.

For anyone who has some technical knowledge of cryptology, they would throughly enjoy it.

I rarely, if ever, write a review of books I read (and I read obsessively!) I simply give the book the amount of stars I think it was worth and move on to the next one. This book however, run so many wonderful bells, it deserves the time to take a review and deserves 100 stars if that were possible.

To be clear - I never heard of this author before this book - and I never once came across the protagonist's name even though I have read a lot about WWII. Giving voice to a woman who would have surely been forgotten, Jason Fagone, should be applauded.

First and foremost, the author knows how to write non-fiction history. This may seem a small endeavor and achievement to most but trust me it is not.

The subject matter, a humble woman, who did change the course of WWII and also changed the course of cryptography, is fascinating, endearing, and truly courageous.

I myself, work in the forefront of cyber security on huge, delicate systems which absolutely must guarantee security to users at all times. And anyone working in cyber security, will tell you the first rule is: "Absolutely nothing is ever 100% secure". With all the computer power at my fingertips, with all the Cloud infrastructure, with all of AWS sitting there to be used - I would give it all up in a nano-second, to have been able to sit at the feet Elizabeth Friedman to be able to listen to her and see her unique mind at work.

In life, due to the age she was born into, being a woman she did not ever get any credit. Certainly she is not the only person whom Hoover stole their entire work. (It is to this day, astounding to me how Hoover, the ultimate misogynist, committed so many crimes for his own ego.)

The biggest compliment I could possibly give, is that every single person on my team is going to get a strong recommendation to take the time and read this book. Maybe, sooner or later, in our modern world of data doubling every day, it will help them to understand how important the job really is. And maybe, a real pencil and paper will appear finally next to their screens, training their minds to find the real patterns within all the chaos.

Started out promising but got bogged down in too much uninteresting detail. On the other hand much information was missing that would have been interesting. Like, on the actual code cracking. I started skipping more and more after about half and quit soon after. Also, with all respect for their intellectual feat, I couldn't really warm to the couple's characters. Not sure they were always aware what they were instruments for. Two to three stars.

If you like historical non-fiction, you HAVE to read this book.

It's the real story about Elizebeth Smith Friedman and her husband William, both pioneers in crytology and code-breaking. They both played an immensely important role in World War II breaking encrypted codes that were supposed to be unbreakable, with Elizebeth hunting Nazi spies in South America and her husband breaking codes from the Japanese.

Elizebeth was brilliant, yet her role in fighting the war and creating techniques in code-breaking that are still used today have been largely edited out of the history books. This happened due to an unfortunate combination of politics, male chauvinism, the power-hungry J. Edgar Hoover taking all the credit for himself, and Elizebeth's inherent modesty and habit of downplaying her achievements.

Author Jason Fagone did a fantastic job shining the spotlight on this great woman and giving her the credit that is her due.

This is the story of Elizabeth Friedman, a pioneering cryptoanalyst whose contribution to her area was huge and has only recently become fully acknowledged. She stumbled into the field when in the employ of a highly eccentric and very wealthy American called George Fabyan, who funded a research facility called Riverbank near Chicago, and hired her to assist in unlocking supposed secret messages from Frances Bacon embedded in the works of Shakespeare. Although Elizabeth quickly realised that this work was well-meaning but nonsensical, by chance she was redirected to working on breaking real codes when Fabyan offered the services of his facility to the US government when the US entered the first world war. Although a linguist rather than a mathematician, Elizabeth had a gift for spotting patterns in text, and quickly moved beyond the knowledge set out by the only textbook on the subject at that time. She was joined in this activity by her soon-to-be husband, Willaim Friedman, a scientist working at Riverbank. The careers of the husband and wife code breaking team are set out in this well-written and meticulously researched book (the bibliography runs to 90 pages) and a remarkable tale it is. Both were extremely talented in an obscure field that was about to become very important with the increasing use of radio, meaning that transmissions (say between governments) could be quite easily intercepted, and so needed to be encoded to preserve privacy.

Elizabeth's career involved breaking coded messages used by gangsters in the Prohibition era 1920s through to decrypting the messages of both the Japanese military and Nazi spies in the second world war. This included cracking the codes of the famous Enigma machine and its Japanese equivalent, roughly at the same time as was done at Bletchley Park in the UK by Alan Turing and his team. Elizabeth's work was far less publicised than her husband's due to the social norms of the day, but they literally wrote the book(s) on modern cryptography. Indeed when William was sent to Germany just after the war ended to try and discover what he could about German code-breaking, he was amazed to find their own textbooks, carefully translated into German, in pride of place inside the Nazi code-breaking labs.

The tale is told skilfully by the author, who does not get bogged down in the intricacies of the code-breaking (for me, a little more depth here would have been welcome) but brings to life the characters in the story. Fortunately, the Friedmans documented their work meticulously, though much of this was classified for decades, and so a wealth of material is available to draw on. It is fascinating to see how US inter-agency rivalry frequently caused setbacks, with the FBI anxious to claim credit for the remarkable results of Elizabeth's code-breaking team based at the less glamourous US coastguard agency. Her dismantling of a Nazi spy network in South America in particular reads like something from a crime novel.

A fascinating story, well told.

Libro certamente interessante e storicamente valido. Tuttavia l'approccio alla biografia della criptologa secondo il mio punto di vista pecca di due debolezze. Se si vuole fare la biografia di un grande personaggio vi sono a mio parere due vie possibili. La prima è quella di analizzare l'opera del personaggio sotto l'aspetto tecnico. La seconda e quella di raccontare la sua vita considerando gli aspetti umani lasciando un po' da parte l'analisi tecnica sulle sue opere. Il libro in questione certa di unire i due aspetti con il risultato di un lavoro a volte troppo prolisso che rende la lettura faticosa.

Je ne connaissais absolument pas Mme Friedsman, ni même le couple, et leurs exploits. J'ai entendu parler de ce livre dans une chronique sur la naissance de la cryptographie et je n'ai pas été déçu de la lecture.

Le livre est accessible à quiconque souhaite s'intéresser au rapport de la femme dans les sciences au XXe siècle et notamment lors de la Guerre, sans nécessiter de connaissances en mathématiques.