"Elizebeth Smith Friedman had a rare talent for spotting patterns and solving puzzles. These skills led her to become one of the top cryptanalysts in America during both World War I and World War II.

She originally came to code breaking through her love for Shakespeare when she was hired by an eccentric millionaire to prove that Shakespeare's plays had secret messages in them. Within a year, she had learned so much about code breaking that she was a star in the making. She went on to play a major role decoding messages during WWI and WWII and also for the Coast Guard's war against smugglers.

Elizebeth and her husband, William, became the top code-breaking team in the US, and she did it all at a time when most women weren't welcome in the workforce.

Amy Butler Greenfield is an award-winning historian and novelist who aims to shed light on this female pioneer of the STEM community."

"Protesters called it an act of war when the U.S. Coast Guard sank a Canadian-flagged vessel in the Gulf of Mexico in 1929. It took a cool-headed codebreaker solving a "trunk-full" of smugglers' encrypted messages to get Uncle Sam out of the mess: Elizebeth Smith Friedman's groundbreaking work helped prove the boat was owned by American gangsters. This book traces the career of a legendary U.S. law enforcement agent, from her work for the Allies during World War I through Prohibition, when she faced danger from mobsters while testifying in high profile trials. Friedman founded the cryptanalysis unit that provided evidence against American rum runners and Chinese drug smugglers. During World War II, her decryptions brought a Japanese spy to justice and her Coast Guard unit solved the Enigma ciphers of German spies. Friedman's "all source intelligence" model is still used today by law enforcement and counterterrorism agencies against 21st century threats."

"William and Elizebeth Friedman were roped into an odd profession by a wealthy eccentric and became America's premier cryptologists.

Toward the end of World War I, the British Army began manufacturing thousands of small cipher machines, "Pletts Cryptographs," for use by the Allied forces. The British asked the American forces to use them as well. No one in the French, British, or American military had been able to break the ciphers; the machine had a mechanism that regularly altered the ciphering scheme, so the first a might be turned into an f and next a into an r.

Just to be sure that it was safe from enemy codebreakers, the American military passed it on to a remarkable husband-and-wife team in Illinois for testing. William and Elizebeth Friedman received a package with five telegram-length messages. It took all of three hours to break the lot, after with they returned them to London, solved. The first of the messages read: "This cipher is absolutely undecipherable.

Few ciphers were indecipherable to the Friedmans. By the end of his life, William Friedman was recognized as the greatest maker and breaker of codes and ciphers. Repeatedly, he accepted challenges to solve "unbreakable" ciphers, and succeeded. The paprs he wrote brought cryptology, an ancient skill as obscure as witchcraft, into the scientific age. The team he trained and supervised broke into Japan's highest diplomatic cipher just before World War II; not only did the group penetrate the secret, it built a deciphering machine that worked as well as Japan's cipher machine. Elizebeth Friedman provided exceptional assistance to the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy, unraveling secret messages from rumrunners during Prohibition, narcotics traffickers during the 1930's and enemy agents during wartime. True to the shadowy world of intelligence work, th epair shunned publicity and avoided discussing their work - even with each other."

"SHE learned about ciphers from Shakespeare. In her position as chief Crypt-analytic Section of U.S. Coast Guard, trim, smart young Elizebeth Friedman has "cracked" (solved, to us) more secret messages of criminal rings than any other woman in this country. Dope smugglers, jewel thieves, rum runners - enemies of the Government - tremble before her agile brain. A cryptic wireless message, intercepted, is brought to her. Studies it. Translates it - and Federal agents are on the trail. At a recent trial in New Orleans, where she was Uncle Sam's expert witness, nine lawyers tried to confound her. She won - and another gang of dope peddlers went to jail. Seldom, if ever, finds a message too complicated to unravel. uses many methods, including higher mathematics. Became interested in analyses of cryptograms by working on the old controversy as to whether or not Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays and concealed his message in cipher. First real work began with spy codes during the World War. Mrs. Friedman is the mother of two children, and accomplished musician, club woman, ardent bicyclist. Married to Major William Friedman, Chief of the Signal Intelligence Service of the War Department. Together they have represented the United States at international conferences. Last year, while in Spain, they received cryptic messages from their nine-year-old daughter. It seems it runs in the family."