Geniuses at War
Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age
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Narrated by:
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John Lee
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By:
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David A. Price
About this listen
The dramatic, untold story of the brilliant team whose feats of innovation and engineering created the world’s first digital electronic computer—decrypting the Nazis’ toughest code, helping bring an end to WWII, and ushering in the information age.
• Winner, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Middleton Award for "a book ... that both exemplifies exceptional scholarship and reaches beyond academic communities toward a broad public audience." • A Kirkus Best Book of 2022 •
Planning the invasion of Normandy, the Allies knew that decoding the communications of the Nazi high command was imperative for its success. But standing in their way was an encryption machine they called Tunny (British English for “tuna”), which was vastly more difficult to crack than the infamous Enigma cipher.
To surmount this seemingly impossible challenge, Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker, brought in a maverick English working-class engineer named Tommy Flowers who devised the ingenious, daring, and controversial plan to build a machine that would calculate at breathtaking speed and break the code in nearly real time. Together with the pioneering mathematician Max Newman, Flowers and his team produced—against the odds, the clock, and a resistant leadership—Colossus, the world’s first digital electronic computer, the machine that would help bring the war to an end.
Drawing upon recently declassified sources, David A. Price’s Geniuses at War tells, for the first time, the full mesmerizing story of the great minds behind Colossus and chronicles the remarkable feats of engineering genius that marked the dawn of the digital age.
©2021 David A. Price (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of the Year
Winner, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Middleton Award
“A remarkable book. Highly accessible, with many historical details formerly unknown to me. The book is empathetic and engaging with a three-dimensional and rich texture. I felt as if I were there. What was accomplished, especially with Colossus, is nothing short of amazing. Reading excerpts from correspondence about predictions for artificial intelligence and networks was astonishing for its accuracy looking back nearly 75 years. Price deserves great praise for a historical gem.”—Vint Cerf, father of the Internet
“David Price has produced the riveting story of how a team of colorful geniuses in Bletchley Park, England broke the most secure German World War II codes. The tale of Alan Turing and the Enigma machine is well known, but Price describes the very secret code-breaking project that Turing and his colleagues tackled later in the war, which involved building the world’s first electronic computer. Thus was the digital age born.”—Walter Isaacson, author of The Innovators
“World War II opened two legendary gateways to the modern age: Los Alamos and Bletchley Park. A declassified report on the construction of the atomic bomb was released just six days after Hiroshima, while the Official Secrets Act lingered for thirty years over the codebreaking at Bletchley Park. David Price has distilled the available knowledge into an authoritative yet fast-paced account, lending the characters behind Colossus a voice that was silenced for far too long.”—George Dyson, author of Turing's Cathedral
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In the late 1930s, legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the 20th century at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.
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Fantastic book, weak technical execution
- By Paul on 10-13-18
By: Jennet Conant
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The Idea Factory
- Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
- By: Jon Gertner
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Idea Factory, New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner reveals how Bell Labs served as an incubator for scientific innovation from the 1920s through the1980s. In its heyday, Bell Labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1200 of whom held PhDs and 13 of whom won Nobel Prizes. Thriving in a work environment that embraced new ideas, Bell Labs scientists introduced concepts that still propel many of today’s most exciting technologies.
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Great story -- horrible pauses
- By Rodney on 01-29-13
By: Jon Gertner
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War of Shadows
- Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East
- By: Gershom Gorenberg
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets.
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Interesting history: mediocre narration.
- By William R. Todd-Mancillas (Name includes hyphen and capitalized M). on 06-12-22
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A Mind at Play
- How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
- By: Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.
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I wanted more information about Information Theory
- By Bonny on 05-08-18
By: Rob Goodman, and others
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Betrayal in Berlin
- The True Story of the Cold War's Most Audacious Espionage Operation
- By: Steve Vogel
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Its code name was “Operation Gold”, a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military telecommunication lines. The tunnel, crossing the border between the American and Soviet sectors, would have to be 1,500 feet (the length of the Empire State Building) with state-of-the-art equipment, built and operated literally under the feet of their Cold War adversaries.
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Fascinating Book
- By Toni Bowes on 01-11-20
By: Steve Vogel
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The Bastard Brigade
- The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
During World War II, in the middle of building an atomic bomb, the leaders of the Manhattan Project were alarmed to learn that Nazi Germany was far outpacing the Allies in nuclear weapons research; Hitler, with just a few pounds of uranium, would have the capability to reverse the entire D-Day operation and conquer Europe. So they assembled a rough and motley crew of geniuses—dubbed the Alsos Mission—and sent them careening into Axis territory to spy on, sabotage, and even assassinate members of Nazi Germany's feared Uranium Club.
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Awesome
- By Solar red on 07-12-19
By: Sam Kean
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Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By reader on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
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The Woman Who Smashed Codes
- A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies
- By: Jason Fagone
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1912, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the US government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the Adam and Eve of the NSA, Elizebeth's story, incredibly, has never been told.
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Captivating Biography
- By Jean on 11-20-17
By: Jason Fagone
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The Quiet Americans
- Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War - a Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Scott Anderson
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Scott Anderson
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At the end of World War II, the United States was considered the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear—to some—that the Soviet Union was already seeking to expand and foment revolution around the world, and the American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly formed CIA. Chronicling their fascinating lives, Scott Anderson follows the exploits of four spies. Despite their ambitions, time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by ham-fisted politicking and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government.
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A Tragedy for One
- By Amazon Customer on 09-23-20
By: Scott Anderson
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The Victorian Internet
- The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Victorian Internet tells the colorful story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. The electric telegraph nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before or since, and its story mirrors and predicts that of the Internet in numerous ways.
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Very nice audiobook
- By David on 05-23-16
By: Tom Standage
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Blackett's War
- The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In March 1941, after a year of unbroken and devastating U-boat onslaughts, the British War Cabinet decided to try a new strategy in the foundering naval campaign. To do so, they hired an intensely private, bohemian physicist who was also an ardent socialist. Patrick Blackett was a former navy officer and future winner of the Nobel Prize; he is little remembered today, but he and his fellow scientists did as much to win the war against Nazi Germany as almost anyone else.
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First time science used to fight a war
- By Jean on 08-20-14
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Alan Turing
- Unlocking The Enigma
- By: David Boyle
- Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards
- Length: 2 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Alan Mathison Turing. Mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, a founder of computer science, and the father of Artificial Intelligence, Turing was one of the most original thinkers of the last century - and the man whose work helped create the computer-driven world we now inhabit. But he was also an enigmatic figure, deeply reticent yet also strikingly naive. Turing's openness about his homosexuality at a time when it was an imprisonable offense ultimately led to his untimely death at the age of only 41.
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Fascinating look at a fascinating man
- By kwestrope on 10-16-18
By: David Boyle
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Proving Ground
- The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer
- By: Kathy Kleiman
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After the end of World War II, the race for technological supremacy sped on. Top-secret research into ballistics and computing, begun during the war to aid those on the front lines, continued across the United States as engineers and programmers rushed to complete their confidential assignments. Among them were six pioneering women, tasked with figuring out how to program the world's first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer—better known as the ENIAC. Proving Ground restores these women to their rightful place as technological revolutionaries.
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A Joy to Listen To
- By Sam on 08-07-22
By: Kathy Kleiman
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Not a Guide on How to Disappear
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For most of us, the only thing we know about flies is that they're annoying, and our usual reaction is to try to kill them. In Super Fly, the myth-busting biologist Jonathan Balcombe shows the order Diptera in all of its diversity, illustrating the essential role that flies play in every ecosystem in the world as pollinators, waste-disposers, predators, and food source; and how flies continue to reshape our understanding of evolution.
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Wonderful
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A Thread of Violence
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Malcolm Macarthur was a well-known Dublin socialite. Suave and urbane, he passed his days mingling with artists and aristocrats, reading philosophy, living a life of the mind. But by 1982, his inheritance had dwindled to almost nothing, a desperate threat to his lifestyle. Macarthur hastily conceived a plan: He would commit bank robbery, of the kind that had become frightfully common in Dublin at the time. But his plan spun swiftly out of control, and he needlessly killed two innocent civilians.
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A meandering waste of time
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Policing Saigon
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Overall
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Policing Saigon isn't Platoon or Apocalypse Now, but the story of Loren W. Christensen's experience as a military policeman (MP) in a city of millions at a time when chaos and fear reigned. As a 23-year-old from a small town in Washington State, the author was plunged into a chaotic city of brawling servicemen, prostitutes, racial violence, enemy rockets, riots, and death. It was a place that would give him a unique opportunity to see up close a different side of the Vietnam War and its effect on the human condition.
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Forget about it.
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Time of the Magicians
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Story
When Chief Joe Pfeifer led his firefighters to investigate an odor of gas in downtown Manhattan on the morning of 9/11, he had no idea that his life was about to change forever. A few moments later, he watched as the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Pfeifer, the closest FDNY chief to the scene, spearheaded rescue efforts on one of the darkest days in American history.
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An amazing account
- By Anonymous User on 09-09-21
By: Joseph Pfeifer
What listeners say about Geniuses at War
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joe B.
- 09-04-24
Crisp and clear retelling of Bletchley Park story
I have read a lot of the literature about the cryptanalysis triumphs at Bletchley Park. This book does not contain any new revelations, but it does a great job of telling the story very concisely, while not omitting critical elements. It also does an admirable service by finally giving star treatment to Tommy Flowers, the engineer who actually designed and built the first programmable digital computer. I would highly recommend this account as the first book to read on the British decoding effort to any newcomer.
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- William J Waite
- 09-03-24
One of the best ww2 stories
If you are a fan of WW 2 literature, especially the code breaker, this was a great read.
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- A. Visserman
- 10-02-24
Not sure of the purpose of this book
It seems to veer from a history of code breaking before and during second world war and morphs into a biography of Alan Turing. Very little here that is not contained in the Imitation Game.
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- Tom Thompson
- 05-22-22
Captivating!
Outstanding narrative of the early beginnings of electronic processes. You do not have to be a nerd to enjoy this story. If you like history and the personalities of those who make it, this book is for you!
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- JTA98
- 12-09-21
ok not great
The narrator was great. I couldn't finish the book because I was expecting more of a storyline. Not just facts about the whole event.
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1 person found this helpful