Jason Fagone

"An epic tale of invention, in which ordinary people's lives are changed forever by a quest to engineer a radically new kind of car. In 2007, science-fiction enthusiast Peter Diamandis announced he would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that traveled 100 miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than 300 teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. This book...

It tells the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst whose painstaking work decoding thousands of messages for the U.S. government would send infamous gangsters to prison and bring down a massive, near-invisible Nazi spy ring in WWII. A suburban wife and mother who led a secret double life, her remarkable contributions to the science of cryptology would only come to light decades after her death when classified...