Greetings friends,
Today is the birthday of Elizebeth Friedman, the great U.S. codebreaker.
A life less ordinary
She was born on August 26, 1892, in a small Indiana town. She was not a big fan of the town. Her family was large and she was small in stature and sort of sickly and her last name was Smith, the most common of names. People didn’t see her. Elizebeth’s father didn’t want her to attend college. She feared she was destined for an “ordinary” life. Elizebeth wrote that in her teenage diary, a slim black book filled with lyric poetry and dreams of rebellion. She was supposed to stay in her place, to be a schoolteacher, something like that, in Indiana, forever.
But she had a mind. It was unusual. She didn’t know how unusual until she left the town and found a way to test it.
I think about Elizebeth every year at this time. I think about where she came from and where she ended up. How did this petite English teacher, this poet, turn herself into one of the greatest codebreakers of the 20th century? How did she invent an entirely new science of codes and ciphers, a field traditionally dominated by mathematicians? How did she become a secret weapon of the U.S. government during both world wars, creating and leading a whole team of codebreakers at a time when women had barely won the right to vote? How did she hunt down and capture one of the most dangerous Nazi spies of WWII? I spent three years reporting the tale for The Woman Who Smashed Codes and it’s all so amazing to me, still.
Happy birthday, Elizebeth.
And thanks, as always, to those of you who have read/shared her story. It means a lot.
A few book recommendations
People are doing this in Substacks now. It’s fun. Why not.
The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker. I’m late to it. I told a writer friend about this one and he was like, Well, yeah. But books will wait around for you, and I guess this is the moment when I’m ready for The Peregrine because it feels like a miracle. I’m not a bird person or even a Nature person really but I feel like I can see and hear the birds that Baker is describing with ludicrous clarity. The other day on a long car ride my wife and I were listening to R.E.M.’s 1987 record Document and couldn’t believe how fresh it felt, urgent and immediate, and The Peregrine gives a similar sensation. The way this man writes about flight, the sky, things that happen in the sky! The capacity of sight itself.
On Boxing, by Joyce Carol Oates. Surprisingly funny! Pure pleasure.
Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad… and Why Great Companies Stay Great, by Eric Ries. A decade ago, Eric was an early and enthusiastic supporter of The Woman Who Smashed Codes. He reached out when I moved to San Francisco for work, and I had a chance to meet him. Super bright guy, an expert on tech and startup culture, known for his book The Lean Startup. He sent me his latest, Incorruptible, and I loved it. Eric writes with passion and precision about the wrecking ball of big-money investing, how Wall Street and private equity turn companies with integrity into rubble. He tells a number of infuriating stories that resonated with me. I remember my father going through this when I was a kid, at his company, which was bought and drained by a private equity firm. Eric proposes solutions that feel human and also achievable. I didn’t expect to be moved by a “business” book but I was.
The Intuitionist, by Colson Whitehead. Re-reading this. I’ve been re-reading more books lately. Maybe I’m getting old. I remembered loving this one years ago and I went back to it with such pleasure. Another small miracle of storytelling. Truth about race and cities and power. Truth and jokes. The main character is an elevator inspector in New York. There’s a magazine that covers the elevator industry. The magazine is called Lift. None of it should work and all of it works like crazy.
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. Dude does one thing but he nails it.
Lore, Roy Kesey. Roy is a friend, a fiction writer at Washington College. One of the perks of being a writer and having writer friends is that you get to read their books early sometimes. Roy’s new book, Lore, is a short novel set on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It is incredible, it is brilliant. I was texting him and texting him as I read it and then I finished it and sent him 20 more texts. It is so sad, maybe the saddest page-turner I’ve read, I cried and cried, but it’s also very funny, and, at the end, hopeful. I’m thinking right now of a certain joke that detonated for me. I was wheezing. I texted Roy “omg” and went back to reading. I think people are going to love Lore.
On my bedside stack to read next: Pamela Colloff’s Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast. Saving this as a treat for when I finish the draft of my own book. Speaking of which…
The Husband Simulation
My next book is about human-AI relationships. It’s called The Husband Simulation. I almost have the draft where I want it. I’ll have more to say soon. For now I’ll just say that The Husband Simulation is a very human story that happens to involve AI. It’s a true story, nonfiction, like everything I do. It’s about real human beings with names and jobs and families and recognizable lives. You don’t need to care about AI or know anything about the tech to enjoy it. You don’t need to like AI or hate AI or feel any way about AI at all, though probably you do. We all do at this point. The book is a love story. I’ve tried to make it read like a love story. The Woman Who Smashed Codes was a love story of a different sort.
I guess this is my thing.
So yes. The Husband Simulation is a book about love. The power of love. That may sound cheesy but I mean it. Huey Lewis was onto something. (And The News, sorry. Didn’t mean to leave out The News.)
I’ll keep you posted!
Thanks again,
Jason