Your Store
Select A Store
Select Store
There are no stores nearby.
My Store:
Select A Store
Overview
Overview
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 Waterhouse and Detachment 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 granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine 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 iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Stephenson, Neal
- ISBN: 9780380788620
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.08 x 1.61
- Number Of Pages: 928
- Publication Year: 2000
Customer Reviews
Rating Snapshot
5 ★
50%
4 ★
50%
3 ★
0%
2 ★
0%
1 ★
0%
2 Ratings
0
0% Would Recommend
0 Recommendations
Review Images
Sort by:
-
World War 2, The Internet, and Buried Treasure.
Ray A. - 1 year 8 months agoMost places would shelve Cryptonomicon in the Science Fiction section and they wouldn't be wrong. But a more accurate category would be Mystery. Neal Stephenson's sprawling novel takes us from the code crackers of WWII's Bletchley Park to the dawn of the modern internet era. The power of this novel is in its ability to illustrate the interconnectedness of technologies in the 20th century. A church organ, for example, operates similarly to a computer program; or a young Alan Turing, akin to a modern-day hacker. And the battles of WWII move from the battlefield to the boardroom as companies vie for valuable real estate to lay fiber optic wire. But this wouldn't be an international and multi-generational mystery if it didn't have a buried treasure as well. For its length, Cryptonomicon is still a page turner. It's quite the clever read and is recommended for readers of Pynchon and Cussler alike.
HPB Staff Review -
Like a fan fiction for WWII Code Breakers & Scientists
David B. - 4 years 10 months agoCryptonomicon weaves a tale of a modern high-tech treasure hunt with a story of an eccentric WWII code breaker and an assorted cast of characters dedicated to misdirecting the Axis war effort. While a great deal of effort is put into looking at the technology of the day and the fascinating ways it can be used and twisted, the real gem of the piece is the characters Neil Stephenson writes and how amazingly well the split narratives flow into each other. It is at times a deeply nerdy book, but it is a deeply satisfying read merging several genres into each other and leaving as a cohesive whole
HPB Staff Review