Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon's cover

I only made it halfway through Cryptonomicon. It had some interesting ideas, but it was long, and it didn't move quickly.

It does a few things well:

  • One of the characters is interested in math, and that character's musings provide a reasonably accessible window into cryptography and computer science.
  • One of the characters is doing WW2 counterintelligence, and that shows a different side than usually gets told in all of the stories about Turing and Enigma.
  • One of the characters is working on a modern day technology startup, which shows some of the real security threats that we deal with today.

It was a bit hard for me to read the modern day stuff, though, because the book was written 15 years ago, and it got some stuff wrong.  Also, it feels like the modern day tech characters are fairly weak caricatures that reinforce negative stereotypes.