Jill S. (brainybibliophile) -
Like so much of her work, the woman at the center of Fagone's book remains shadowy, despite voluminous research on Fagone's part. But could it be any other way?
Elizebeth Friedman's tale is told in three parts. The first is the most interesting, and the reader gets to know Friedman quite well as a young woman who stumbles from a library into a fascinating code-breaking job in the employ of the enigmatic George Fabyan of Riverbank. Did Francis Bacon actually write Shakespeare's plays? Friedman is hired to explore the supposed biliteral cypher encoded in the type. Her masterful efforts, and her questions, launch her into the arms of her fellow-codebreaker husband William and into history but away from the clutches of the wealthy Renaissance (con?) man Fabyan.
Friedman begins to fade a bit in the next two parts of the book, perhaps of simple historical necessity. Her codebreaking prowess attracts government attention, and the latter of the book describes her skill breaking codes of drug- and alcohol-dealers, then Nazis engaged in the "Invisible War" in South American in WWII. Because what she does is so secretive, the story moves away from her and into political intrigue. It seems that Fagone was caught up in the details of the spy intrigue between Germany and South America, but the abundance of information about those historical figures overwhelms Friedman herself. She becomes almost a flat character, one very different from the lively, tempestuous, brilliant woman at Riverbank. She certainly remained brilliant, breaking thousands of complicated codes along with the coast guard, but how she did that remains "under wraps." Perhaps this is yet another sacrifice she made for her country: she couldn't tell her husband what she was doing (and he couldn't divulge the codebreaking headway he was making, either, with devices like Enigma), and she couldn't reveal how integral she was to the ending of WWII, even after the war. After her husband's death, she painstakingly organized his papers while neglecting her own, due to humility? Resignation? Misunderstanding of her importance to peace and history? We will likely never know.
The codebreaking processes themselves remain difficult to understand. Some of the earlier examples in the book, simple transposition of one alphabet for another, or reading down one column and up the next, are fairly simple, but the later deciphering processes which involve multiple steps and, occasionally, numbers or other languages, are challenging to comprehend.
As I so often think when I read true stories about women like Friedman, I asked myself, "Why did I never hear of her before reading this book?" No matter its perhaps unavoidable shortcomings, Fagone's book has done Friedman, and us all, a great service.
Elizebeth Friedman's tale is told in three parts. The first is the most interesting, and the reader gets to know Friedman quite well as a young woman who stumbles from a library into a fascinating code-breaking job in the employ of the enigmatic George Fabyan of Riverbank. Did Francis Bacon actually write Shakespeare's plays? Friedman is hired to explore the supposed biliteral cypher encoded in the type. Her masterful efforts, and her questions, launch her into the arms of her fellow-codebreaker husband William and into history but away from the clutches of the wealthy Renaissance (con?) man Fabyan.
Friedman begins to fade a bit in the next two parts of the book, perhaps of simple historical necessity. Her codebreaking prowess attracts government attention, and the latter of the book describes her skill breaking codes of drug- and alcohol-dealers, then Nazis engaged in the "Invisible War" in South American in WWII. Because what she does is so secretive, the story moves away from her and into political intrigue. It seems that Fagone was caught up in the details of the spy intrigue between Germany and South America, but the abundance of information about those historical figures overwhelms Friedman herself. She becomes almost a flat character, one very different from the lively, tempestuous, brilliant woman at Riverbank. She certainly remained brilliant, breaking thousands of complicated codes along with the coast guard, but how she did that remains "under wraps." Perhaps this is yet another sacrifice she made for her country: she couldn't tell her husband what she was doing (and he couldn't divulge the codebreaking headway he was making, either, with devices like Enigma), and she couldn't reveal how integral she was to the ending of WWII, even after the war. After her husband's death, she painstakingly organized his papers while neglecting her own, due to humility? Resignation? Misunderstanding of her importance to peace and history? We will likely never know.
The codebreaking processes themselves remain difficult to understand. Some of the earlier examples in the book, simple transposition of one alphabet for another, or reading down one column and up the next, are fairly simple, but the later deciphering processes which involve multiple steps and, occasionally, numbers or other languages, are challenging to comprehend.
As I so often think when I read true stories about women like Friedman, I asked myself, "Why did I never hear of her before reading this book?" No matter its perhaps unavoidable shortcomings, Fagone's book has done Friedman, and us all, a great service.
Laura P. (hemmputnam) reviewed The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies on + 1154 more book reviews
The two people who finished this book for book group truly enjoyed it. One is a computer coder and the other works in a library. The rest of the group gave up about a third of the way through, finding it too dry. I found it fascinating in terms of world history I did not know (the connection between the Nazi Party and South America) and the incredible impact Elizebeth's code breaking had on world events. I wished there had been a bit more about the personal side of her life. We know that neither her parents nor her husband's parents were happy about their marriage across religious lines. What happened over the long term in relation to that? Did the grandkids bring them together? That said, there was an impressive amount of detail about her work and I'm really glad to have learned about this unheard of woman from history. If you are in the Chicago area, the Fabyan Forest Preserve is free and open to the public and you can see the windmill and other places mentioned early in the book.
