GENIUSES AT WAR

“Riveting” — Walter Isaacson

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR’S CHOICE

Planning the invasion of Normandy, the Allies knew that decoding the communications of the Nazi high command was essential for its success. But standing in their way was a German encryption machine known as Tunny (British English for “tuna”), which was vastly more difficult to crack than the infamous Enigma.

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. Flowers and his team produced—against the odds, the clock, and a resistant leadership—Colossus, the world’s first digital electronic computer and the machine that would help bring the war to an end.

Geniuses at War tells in full, for the first time, the mesmerizing story of the great minds behind Colossus and chronicles the remarkable feats of engineering genius that marked the dawn of the digital age.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021.

Winner, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Middleton Award for “a book in the history of an IEEE-related technology that both exemplifies exceptional scholarship and reaches beyond academic communities toward a broad public audience.”

WHERE TO BUY

Print: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | National Museum of Computing (UK)

Ebook: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Audio: Apple Books/iTunes | Audible | Google Play

PRAISE

"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

"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

“Fresh. . . . Page-turning. . . . Price delivers a fascinating account of the problems Flowers and his team overcame before the massive machine called Colossus arrived. . . . He tells a terrific story. An entertaining history of brilliant minds at work against the Nazi behemoth.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Price (The Pixar Touch) puts his expertise in history and technology to excellent use in his latest book. . . . Incredibly well-written and well-researched, this fast-paced book reads like a novel.“ — Library Journal (starred review)