Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies

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This is a magnificent, memorable, important book.

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2017

Immediately added to my favorites shelf. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

The Woman Who Smashed Codes will be compared with Hidden Figures, and that's fair, to a point. Both books have at their core a story of remarkable scientific/mathematic achievement, overlooked because of gender, largely forgotten (until now) as others took credit. But it is so much more, so rich in its account of not only an extraordinary woman, but the time in which she lived, two World Wars and her central role in both, the incredible marriage that gave birth to modern American cryptanalysis, that I think it deserves to be evaluated on its own.

Even in the hands of a merely serviceable writer, it would be an enjoyable read. But Fagone elevates the story, weaving it into as rich a tapestry as you could hope for. Secondary characters jump from the page just as much as Elizebeth and her husband William; little details transport you to the small, smoke-filled rooms where Elizebeth and her tiny team toiled in obscurity in defense of the country. Fagone firmly establishes Elizebeth Friedman's place in our history, and not only gives her her due, but demands that we reevaluate what we thought we knew about the wars, and the origins of America's intelligence services (nearly all of them have her fingerprints on them), and the people who are given credit for critical milestones in the country's history.

This is a magnificent, memorable, important book.

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Michele G.

Fascinating story.

Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2018

I loved learning about Elizebeth Friedman 's genius and accomplishments, but I thought the writing was mediocre at best. Too much time spent on descriptions of her husband's work. I did not appreciate that the author violated their privacy by publishing intimate details of the couple 's correspondence including erotic passages. That was unnecessary to the story. The timeline was often confusing, going back and forth. I think a good editor could have cleaned up the story and made it more enjoyable to read.

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Rick K.

This is a magnificent, memorable, important book.

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2017

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Ollivier Robert

Anyone interested in cryptographic history should read it

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2017

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Anyone interested in the History of cryptography knows William F. Friedman, known as the man who broke Purple the Japanese cipher machine and many things. But who did know that his wife, née Elizebeth Smith, was his equal in cryptographic skills? She created a Coast Guard cryptographic team, broke an Enigma without any help from Bletchley Park, helped expose many Prohibition-era gangs and Nazi spy networks in South America during WWII and worked in tandem with William during WWI. She is as much part of cryptographic history as her husband is.

This is her history in that book, I highly recommended it.

I knew she was very good but I didn't know she was that good. Thanks to the author for the book, loved it.

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Another amazing story from declassified files that rewrites American history

Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2017

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When Richard Nixon asked Chou En-Lai in 1972 about the impact of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier famously said, "It's too early to tell." That terse response is generally understood to illustrate the Chinese ability to take the long view of history. But it might be more accurate to regard it as reflecting the constraints on those who write history. Historians can only work with available records: there is no history without documentary evidence. And sometimes decades, even centuries pass before the most crucial evidence comes to light.

In fact, ironically, the exchange between Nixon and Chou reflects a misunderstanding that drives the point home even more strongly: they were both referring to the events of 1968, not 1789. Only now, much later, once a diplomat present at the scene clarified the exchange, can historians accurately interpret what the two men meant.

There are few areas in which the unavailability of documentary evidence has been more telling than in the history of espionage in the 20th century. Only in recent years have the archives of the CIA, the KGB, MI6, the NSA, and other leading intelligence agencies opened widely enough for us to understand what really took place in the world of espionage in World War II and the Cold War. (Doubtless, some explosive documents are still locked away and won't surface until later in this century, if ever.) And there is no more dramatic example of how what has passed for history has misled us than what we have been taught about the FBI's role in counterespionage in the 1920s and 30s (combating rumrunners and smugglers) and in the 1940s (catching Nazi spies).

Working with recently declassified files from the World War II era as well as long-ignored archival records and contemporary press reports and interviews, journalist Jason Fagone has brought to light at last the astonishing story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman and her husband, William Friedman. (Yes, her first name is spelled with three e's.) As Fagone shows in his beautifully written story of this surpassingly brilliant couple, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies, the Friedmans may well have been the most important 20th-century American codebreakers, and quite possibly the best and most successful in the world.

William Friedman is celebrated in cryptology circles as the man who broke the Japanese military code called Purple. "MAGIC became the top-secret moniker for these Japanese decryptions . . . MAGIC led directly to bombs falling on imperial ships at Midway," the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

Fagone notes, "Today historians of cryptology believe that in terms of sheer, sweaty brilliance, the breaking of Purple is a feat on par with Alan Turing's epiphanies about how to organize successful attacks on German Enigma codes." However, independently, before the US and Britain's Bletchley Park were collaborating on the effort, Elizebeth Friedman broke not one but three different types of Enigma machines. Fagone makes abundantly clear that the two were at least equal in ability. In fact Elizebeth may have been just a bit smarter. (William always insisted she was.)

"William Friedman is . . . widely considered to be the father of the National Security Agency," Fagone writes. But both he and Elizebeth came to loathe the practices of the agency not long after its formation in 1952. It's very likely they would be scandalized by the indiscriminate collection of information about civilians by today's NSA.

As Fagone notes, "Elizebeth and William Friedman unscrambled thousands of messages spanning two world wars, prying loose secrets about smuggling networks, gangsters, organized crime, foreign armies, and fascism. They also invented new techniques that transformed the science of secret writing, known as cryptology." Although today Elizebeth isn't nearly as famous as her husband, that was by no means always the case. During the 1930s, she become a celebrity for her work against rumrunners and other smugglers and gangsters during the Depression. The public attention halted when she was enlisted by the Coast Guard for a top-secret effort to identify the extensive Nazi spy network in South America—work at which she and her team were extraordinarily successful. Their efforts led to the dismantling of the Nazi network well before the end of the war. However, J. Edgar Hoover claimed the success for the FBI, ignoring their efforts, and he was able to get away with it because he had become so powerful. "It's not quite true that history is written by the winners," Fagone writes. "It's written by the best publicists on the winning team."

The Woman Who Smashed Codes is an astonishing story that simply has to be read to be believed. His principal subject, Elizebeth Friedman, was an extraordinary woman he refers to more than once as a genius. (The evidence is there.) And Fagone writes the tale with often-elegant, metaphorical prose. He calls the book a love story, but it is of course far more than that

The same declassification of secret files that allowed Jason Fagone to write The Woman Who Smashed Codes has led to the publication of several other recent books about women in espionage. The most prominent of these was Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy.

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Simply fascinating!

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2018

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My oh my, what an amazing story this book has to tell. Puzzle solving is something I find myself doing on a small scale on a daily basis so this revelation of the work in cryptanalysis by Elizebeth Smith Friedman was positively fascinating. Thanks to the passage of time documents which tell this story have now been declassified and it is possible to learn the debt we owe to Elizebeth Friedman for her work with the coast guard and their solution of the Enigma code and William Friedman, her husband, for his work with solving the Japanese code Purple. But Elizebeth's team didn't just solve the Enigma code, they solved it three times!

Elizebeth Smith was given the opportunity to live and work on an estate outside Chicago in 1919 to help prove that Shakespeare's works are actually codes written by Francis Bacon. This is where she met William and where they married. Once Elizebeth admitted she did not see any coded messages in the Shakespeare plays she was allowed to move on to other types of codebreaking. Eventually both the Friedman's needed more depth and freedom in their professional lives so they left Riverbank to continue on their codebreaking careers except for different government agencies. This book reveals the genius of Elizebeth Friedman when it came to codebreaking and her absolute loyalty to her teams and her government. She swore an oath of secrecy and she never broke that oath even when others were appropriating her successes and claiming them for themselves. The more information that becomes available about J. Edgar Hoover the more his self styled crown of achievement tarnishes.

The successes of Elizebeth Friedman are brought to light here. The toll this incredibly intense profession had on both the Friedmans is sad to see. I was positively riveted to the pages of this book when the codebreaking during World War II was revealed. This is an incredible story.

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Mary E. Trimble

A remarkable true story

Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2021

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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.

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Steve Hodel

TRUTH OF REAL HERO AND REAL HISTORY VACUUMS UP FBI HOOVER BRAGGADOCIO

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2020

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TRUTH OF REAL HERO AND REAL HISTORY VACUUMS UP FBI HOOVER BRAGGADOCIO

The debris left behind FBI Agent Hoover’s claims of taking credit for codebreaking during WWII has been vacuumed up with the author’s revelations that the U.S’s real Codebreaking heroine, was in fact Elizabeth Friedman, Director of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Decryption Unit.

Author Jason Fagone’s book, “The Woman Who Smashed Codes” has provided the world with the name of a little known and long-forgotten superhero who, (thanks to Fagone’s impeccable research) history will now show (Elizabeth Friedman) did the real work and almost singlehandedly did all of the code-cracking. I quote from page 298:

“During the Second World War, an American woman figured out how to sweep the globe of undercover Nazis. The proof was on paper: four thousand typed decryptions of clandestine Nazi messages that her team shared with the global intelligence community.
…These pieces of paper saved lives. They almost certainly stopped coups. They put fascist spies in prison. …By any measure Elizabeth was a great heroine. The British knew it. The navy knew it. The FBI knew it. But the American public never did because Elizabeth wasn’t allowed to speak.”

Well, now thanks to Fagone’s “Truth to Power” writing of this book, we can hit delete on another one of J. Edgar Hoover’s legendary fictional braggadocio’s and shine the light where it belongs. Thank you, Elizabeth Friedman, for your many years of dedicated service to making our world a safer place.

I strongly recommend this book and congratulate Jason Fagone on his beautifully written book and for ferreting out the remarkable historical truths of a forgotten but true American Hero.

Detective III Steve Hodel
LAPD Hollywood Homicide (ret.)
New York Times Bestselling author, “Black Dahlia Avenger”

One person found this helpful

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Diana S. Long

Fascinating Biography

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2020

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I was fascinated by this woman, Elizebeth Smith Friedman and grateful to the author for writing this work. A chance encounter while searching for a job, she became a recruit at Riverbank owned by an eccentric George Fabyan to work with a lady who was trying to prove that Francis Bacon left coded messages in Shakespeare's First Folio printed in 1623. Elizabeth would meet a biologist there who would become her husband and together they became expert in the field of solving puzzles or breaking codes. “They snuck into vaults of text, sometimes alone, sometimes together, feeling for the click of the bolt. Their lives became a series of increasingly spectacular and improbable heists. They used science to steal truth” excerpt from book page. 30. As we follow Elizebeth and her husband William Friedman throughout their careers in government service it's plain to see that this couple were true patriots and I really felt they were undervalued and underpaid during their lifetime. Excellent and educational biography.

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Judy Parrish

A woman who helped save the world

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2020

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Women scientists and mathematicians have been so often overlooked it's almost become trite to comment on it. Efforts like the movie, "Hidden Figures" help, but what we really need are more books like this one.

The book is about Elizebeth Smith Friedman, a woman who, with her husband, learned to crack all kinds of codes and ciphers and who played a key role during World War II in cracking enemy codes. She was extremely good, much better than her husband, but it is her husband who has been remembered by history. This book corrects that.

The book starts with the story of how she met George Fabyan, a wealthy eccentric who established what today would be called a think tank near Chicago in the early 1900s, called Riverbank. Rarely, for women of the time, Friedman had gone to college, to study literature. Fabyan had an obsession with Shakespeare and was convinced the works held secrets in the form of codes, and he hired Friedman to help crack those codes. A interesting part of the book is the interaction between Fabyan and his increasingly doubtful employee as, under the tutelage of her formidable supervisor, Elizabeth Gallup, she tried and failed to see what he and Mrs. Gallup thought could be seen in the manuscripts.

Friedman met her husband at Riverbank, where he was a photo assistant. He was a biologist and ran genetics experiments on fruit flies. He also had an interest in codes and ciphers. A coded telegram given to them during World War I started their careers as codebreakers.

This book is fascinating. The first part is as much a history of George Fabyan and the Riverbank laboratories. He was a colorful character, and the book captures his personality well. But the central story, of course, is Elizebeth Friedman and her work. I can recommend this book in the highest of terms for any reader. It is very well written, engaging, and a terrific window into the history of the US during the great wars of the early 20th century and the discipline of cryptology.

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Edward Kern

Phenomenal story of the Leading code breakers

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2020

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I first heard the author’s interview on Spycast over a year ago. I thought he was articulate and his research incredible. I bought the book based on this interview. I gave a copy to an elderly friend who worked at the NSA in the 50’s. He was quite enthused by the read. In fact, he recommended it to his friends. I finally decided to pick up the book after reading a number of books also discussed on Spycast. I went back to the podcast last month and listened again to your examination of Elizabeth. I decided it was time for me to read “The Woman Who Smashed Codes”. I can’t begin to write how much I fell in love with the main characters, the Friedmans. It had to be fiction? How could the important figure of Elizabeth’s accomplishments not be known in American History? And yet, the biography and narrative writing made the read easy. I could not put the book down. I have only now finished the last page. It is an amazing story. I admire the authors ability to explain the cryptograms. At first I had to re-read the details. Then I shook my head in awe. I can barely complete a Sudoku puzzle. Maybe I missed this detail. Thank you Mr Fagone for this intense research. I actually checked his bibliography. Impressive. I am now a fan of Mr. Fagone.

If one has not picked it up for fear it will be too difficult to follow like the HUT, fear not....this is enjoyable. Wow to think a woman could be so accomplished and unknown.

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MyOwnWorld2100

Not a boring story, but fascinating and exciting

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2018

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I found this book fascinating because it told the story of a woman, Elizebeth Smith Friedman who was able to work with and in charge of men who were tasked with keeping America safe during WWI & WWII, She was recruited by a rich man to join his group of artists, writers and code breakers in the early 20th Century. She met William Friedman at the compound where they both discovered a talent for breaking secret codes. They married and had children. Elizebeth worked as hard and had a gift William didn't for solving codes. She testified against rum runners during the US prohibition through their secret codes she smashed.
This book follows her career and gives credit where credit is due to her. Even though she was given her own code breakers section and over saw men, she of course was largely overlooked. She may of felt more comfortable as she was more at ease not in the limelight.
This book talks about codes, how they are used, what they look like, but it is also a very human book as the author spends time letting you know about Elizebeth as a young girl, a wife and mother and a code smasher.

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