With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be
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
Watrehouse and Detatchment 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
grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi
sumarine 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 icon
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