Book Review
The Woman Who Smashed Codes
Elizebeth Smith Friedman
If you are a fan of Bletchley Circle and want to know about a power couple who did the same work in the United States, this is a book that will captivate you.
The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone.
The story starts in June 1916 when Elizebeth Smith visits the Newberry Library in Chicago. She had come to see the rare Shakespeare First Folio on display. While there, she asks about research jobs in the area and the librarian mentions that George Fabyan, a wealthy industrialist will be visiting the library that day. He whisks her off to Riverdale, an early think tank that he runs with the proceeds of his inheritance.
Elizebeth is immediately put on a project run by Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup who is convinced that Francis Bacon wrote hidden messages in Shakespeares’s plays. It was Elizebeth’s introduction to code breaking and to William Friedman, the man who would become her husband.
After five years in that bizarre enclave, the Friedmans escaped to Washington, DC and found work in codebreaking during Prohibition. Eventually Elizebeth would head a department for the U.S. Coast Guard breaking rum-running messages and…
