GENIUSES AT WAR Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age

Golden Voice narrator John Lee adapts just the right tone--authoritative, intelligent, quintessentially British--for this revealing history of the men and women who cracked the Nazis' codes at Bletchley Park. Lee does exposition smoothly and with subtlety. His Oxbridge intonations and Cockney imitations vivify the narration. Ultimately, thousands worked at Bletchley, not only revealing the secrets of Enigma but also creating Colossus, the progenitor of digital computers. The listener learns of the brilliant work of mathematician Max Newman and of the extraordinary genius of Tommy Flowers, who masterminded Colossus but was little remembered. Of course, the prescient genius of Alan Turing is detailed as is his sad end. Postwar, the Yanks took the lead in computing, but the Brits' work at Bletchley sped the defeat of the Nazi war machine. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2021]