Cryptonomicon

Neal Stephenson | 4.28 | 100,476 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Marc Andreessen, Ev Williams, Risto Siilasmaa, and 5 others. See all reviews

Ranked #2 in Cryptography, Ranked #6 in Bitcoin — see more rankings.

With this extraordinary first volume in an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse—mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy—is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702—commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces.

Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia—a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn.

A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity. less

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Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Cryptonomicon from the world's leading experts.

Marc Andreessen Co-Founder/Andreessen HorowitzThe Sovereign Individual—written 20 years ago, this is the most thought provoking book on the unfolding nature of the 21st Century that I’ve yet read. It’s packed with ideas on every page, many that are now fast becoming conventional wisdom, and many that are still heretical. Two related books to read are The Twilight of Sovereignty and Cryptonomicon. (Source)

Ev Williams Co-Founder/Twitter, CEO/MediumRecommends this book

Risto Siilasmaa CEO/NokiaThe one book on Siilasmaa's list is this fantasy offering from Neal Stephenson. The novel relates two parallel stories, one about an elite group of code-breakers in World War II, and another set in the present day, about two grandchildren of members of the group trying to track down a previously unknown – and rumored to be unbreakable – Nazi code. The book's subject matter resonates with current issues surrounding data liberty, computer surveillance and cyber security. (Source)

Nick Harkaway Cryptonomicon is a real humdinger of a novel. Stephenson is a hugely enjoyable writer of action and comedy, I find him a joy to read. (Source)

Marko Rakar This is a novel about a new world order where information is the currency, a virtual currency in the world. (Source)

Rankings by Category

Cryptonomicon is ranked in the following categories:

#18 in Computer
#54 in Conspiracy
#8 in Cryptocurrency
#22 in Cyber Security
#8 in Cyberpunk
#91 in Dad
#40 in Espionage
#21 in Gold
#34 in Hacking
#82 in Hugo Award
#47 in Information
#49 in Internet
#10 in Molecular Biology
#43 in NPR
#35 in Nerdy
#7 in Philippines History
#72 in Rated
#99 in Science Fiction
#8 in Submarines
#69 in Tech
#59 in Technology
#19 in World

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