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.
