This book should be the next Hidden Figures.... A must-read for anyone interested in the era, a key piece of the puzzle about the Allied war effort.-Washington Post. It's 1916, eccentric tycoon George Fabyan hires Elizebeth Smith, a young Quaker schoolteacher and poet, to find the secret messages he believes are contained in the plays of playwright William Shakespeare. Elizebeth moves to his luxurious estate hoping to spend the day studying ancient books, but Fabyan's close ties to the government and the urgencies of war quickly transform her mission. She soon learns to apply her knowledge to an exciting new enterprise: deciphering secret messages without knowing the key. Working alongside her is William Friedman, a Jewish scientist who will eventually become her husband and lifelong coding partner. In The Woman Who Broke the Codes, writer and journalist Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary heroine who played a pivotal role in history, from World War I, to Prohibition, to her fight against fascism. A brilliant young woman who helped catch gangsters and smugglers, unmasked a Nazi spy ring in South America and fought a clandestine battle against Hitler's Reich, deciphering several versions of the Enigma machine used by German agents to hide their communications. A book that pays tribute to an unsung heroine whose story is comparable to that of other great female technologists, such as Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, and whose hitherto hidden contributions altered the course of the 20th century.