January 2020 Discussion: The Woman Who Smashed Codes

[Shea]

Please share your thoughts.

[Patty]

This is my review from 1/15/20.
This read was more than a biography or a history of codebreaking in the U.S. It is story of love: Love between two people, husband and wife, love of country and love of words and puzzels. I was completely caught off guard. Jason Fagone manifests his love of knowledge and justice in his search for knowing more about Elizebeth Smith Friedman. But he also demonstrates his skill of writing by compiling the facts as well as the character of his subject.

Fagone states in his Author's Note that he started reading about the Friedmans in 2014 after Edward Sowden shocked the world by revealing that the NSA was gathering the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans. He found a Virginia library that held the Friedmans' personal papers. He notes, "Elizebeth's boxes contained hundreds of her letters. Love letter. Letters to her kids written in code. Handwritten diaries. A partial, unpublisshed autobiography...I'll never be an expert on codes and cipher, but Elizebeth's descriptions of her work gave me a sense of what it must have fllet like to be her--the excitement of solving the kind of puzzlel that could save a life or nudge a war. She liked to say that codes are all around us: in children's report cards, in slang, in headlines and movies and songs. Codebreaking is about noticing and manipulating patterns. Humans do this without thinking. We're wired to see patterns."

Thankyou, Jason Fagone, not for trying to teach me how to break coded messages, because that wasn't the point (except to realize how difficult it is), but for introducing me to Elizebeth Friedman with such dedication and thoroughness and with such skill and grace. You gave me a feeling of what she was like outside of the government work place, as well, which just made her so authentic and unaffected. She had a real sense of humor. She and her husband were special people with great gifts of knowledge that they wanted to share. Now we can share our knowledge of a woman who smashed codes.