Spying on Spies: How Elizebeth Smith Friedman Broke the Nazis' Secret Codes

The fascinating story of America's first female code-breaker, Elizebeth Smith Friedman

As one of the world’s greatest code-breakers, Elizebeth Smith Friedman saved many lives throughout the twentieth century, catching dangerous criminals with her brilliant mind. Yet, she has largely been written out of history books, unlike her famous code-breaker husband. Spying on Spies seeks to right this oversight.

Whip-smart and determined, Elizebeth displayed a remarkable aptitude for language and recognizing patterns from a young age. After she became the Treasury Department’s and Coast Guard’s first code-breaker, she trained all her male colleagues and created her own top-notch code-breaking unit, the first ever led by a woman.

During Prohibition, her work solving and intercepting coded messages from mobsters and criminal gangs led to hundreds of high-profile prosecutions, including members of Al Capone’s gang. Her crowning achievement came during World War II, when Elizebeth uncovered an intricate network of Nazi spies operating in South America. She cracked supposedly unsolvable codes just like the much more famous Alan Turing did at Bletchley Park in England.

Spying on Spies tells the inspiring story of a groundbreaking woman in STEM whose legacy deserves to come out of the shadows.

This audiobook contains a supplemental PDF.

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Release date

Audiobook: 12 March 2024