About the book
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.
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This book has 2 recommendations
Risto Siilasmaa (CEO/Nokia)
The 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.
Recommended by Marc Andreessen (Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz)
Source: AMA with Marc Andreessen
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Risto Siilasmaa, Marc Andreessen