Summary of Jason Fagone's The Woman Who Smashed Codes

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 Elizebeth was interviewed by the NSA in 1976, and she kept referring to the events of Riverbank Laboratories as if they were still recent. She explained that she was the last person who might remember the crags of things.

#2 Elizebeth Smith was a twenty-three-year-old woman who went to the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1916 to look for a job. She was met by George Fabyan, who invited her to come to Riverbank and spend the night with him.

#3 Elizebeth’s family had never shared her fear of being ordinary. They were midwestern people of modest means, Quakers from Huntington, Indiana. Her father, John Marion Smith, traced his lineage to an English Quaker who sailed to America in 1682 on the same boat as William Penn.

#4 Elizebeth’s father didn’t want her to go to college, but she went anyway, studying Greek and English literature at top liberal arts schools. She found the concept of aristocracy liberating: the measure of a person was her ideas, not her wealth or religious knowledge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669356110

IRB Media

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Insights on Jason Fagone's The Woman Who Smashed Codes

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Elizebeth was interviewed by the NSA in 1976, and she kept referring to the events of Riverbank Laboratories as if they were still recent. She explained that she was the last person who might remember the crags of things.

#2

Elizebeth Smith was a twenty-three-year-old woman who went to the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1916 to look for a job. She was met by George Fabyan, who invited her to come to Riverbank and spend the night with him.

#3

Elizebeth’s family had never shared her fear of being ordinary. They were midwestern people of modest means, Quakers from Huntington, Indiana. Her father, John Marion Smith, traced his lineage to an English Quaker who sailed to America in 1682 on the same boat as William Penn.

#4

Elizebeth’s father didn’t want her to go to college, but she went anyway, studying Greek and English literature at top liberal arts schools. She found the concept of aristocracy liberating: the measure of a person was her ideas, not her wealth or religious knowledge.

#5

Elizebeth was extremely bright, but she was also extremely argumentative. She was attracted to male artists, and she wrote about the importance of being honest and not glossing over offensive things.

#6

Elizebeth was a teacher in 1915, and she was still unsure of what she wanted to do with her life. She moved back in with her parents that spring, and began looking for a new job. She didn’t want to work in clerical positions.

#7

The Newberry Library in Chicago houses a rare copy of the First Folio of William Shakespeare, a book whose backstory had intrigued Elizebeth when she learned it in college. The library was created by a rich man’s will, and its trustees wrote their status anxieties upon it.

#8

The Newberry Library was a select institution for the better and cleaner classes. It was a five-story building of tan granite blocks, and all visitors had to fill out a slip stating the purpose of their research. The books were available for reference only.

#9

Elizebeth went to the Newberry Library to see the First Folio. The book was displayed under glass. It was large and dense, and it ran to nine hundred pages. The binding was made of highly polished goatskin with a large grain.

#10

Elizebeth had always wanted to work in literature or research, and she was excited when she was offered the