Neal Stephenson hacks into the key histories of nations and the personal obsessions of men, decrypting with stunning virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse – mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy – is definitely assigned to Detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that just a small number of people know it exists, plus some of those people have brands like Churchill and Roosevelt. The objective of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702 – commanded by about Cryptonomicon Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe – is certainly to keep the Nazis ignorant to the fact that Allied Cleverness has cracked the enemy’s fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into actions from the gung-ho Shaftoe and his causes.

Fast-forward for this, where Waterhouse’s crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is definitely attempting to make a ‘data haven’ in Southeast Asia – a location where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As government authorities and multinationals strike the endeavor, Randy joins causes with Shaftoe’s tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that keeps the key to keeping the imagine a data haven afloat.

But quickly their scheme brings to light an enormous conspiracy, with its roots in Detachment 2702, associated with an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and another of personal and digital liberty…or to general totalitarianism reborn.

A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, since it leaps forwards and back again between World War II and the internet, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It really is a function of great art, thought, and innovative daring.