Cryptonomicon

Set in two eras, Neal Stephenson's 1999 novel moves between World War II and the internet boom of the late 1990s. In 1942 Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young Navy codebreaker with a gift for mathematics, joins Detachment 2702, a secret Allied unit that stages events so the Germans never learn that Enigma has been broken, while Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe carries out its plans in the field. Decades later Randy Waterhouse, Lawrence's grandson, works with a startup to build a data haven in Kinakuta, a sultanate invented for the novel, helped by Shaftoe's granddaughter Amy. Fictional versions of Alan Turing, Winston Churchill and Douglas MacArthur appear, alongside detailed passages on cryptography.

Marc Andreessen, in an AMA, suggested it as a related read to The Sovereign Individual. It was also the one book on Nokia chief executive Risto Siilasmaa's list in a roundup of books CEOs recommend.