In the summer of 1916, a young woman from Indiana set out to solve a mystery. It involved an oddball millionaire, a volume of Shakespeare’s plays, and the secret world of codes and ciphers. Within a year, she had transformed herself into one of America’s top code breakers.
During World War I, Elizebeth Smith Friedman cracked thousands of messages, but that was only the beginning of her brilliant career. In the 1920s and 1930s, she pitted her wits against the mob. When World War II broke out, she hunted Nazi spies. Despite her fame, she was a woman of many secrets, and later she was pushed into the shadows. To get the true measure of her hidden life, award-winning historian Amy Butler Greenfield sifted the truth from the misdirections and myths to write The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life. From the “doll woman” spy to bootleggers, join us for a conversation with Greenfield about the new facts she discovered about the enigma of this astonishing woman’s life.
And as always, you’ll be able to ask questions via our online platform.
Auto-generated closed captioning will be available for this program.
