Quick, fun read for those, like me, have always viewed mysterious scripts as the ultimate "secret codes" — so much more interesting than the simple alphabetic ciphers that I could see no challenge in even as an 8-year-old. Now, an unknown script recording an unknown language — that's a challenge! Fox does a great job of breaking down the strategies and the staggeringly immense amount of painstaking work necessary to solving such a puzzle, perhaps the greatest puzzle possible in cryptography. She makes it readable and does a great job of bringing in the human characters (eccentrics all, as they probably have to be) who take on these puzzles as their life task. ( )

Read this pretty much in one gulp. Amazing story, terrifically told. What a subject and what a great group of characters! Congratulations to the author. ( )

I, academically speaking, basically grew up on tales of Linear B. I mean I distinguished myself on the residency interview trail by being the only medical student to have spent several semesters TAing cryptography; meeting [a:Simon Singh|10894|Simon Singh|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1263127928p2/10894.jpg] is one of the highlights of my life. And Linear B is basically the epitome of a code-breaking story: elegant statistics, linguistic analysis and finally, a successful decryption.

And at the same time, there is something so deep in the human experience about decrypting a language, rather than just a code. I am a deep believer in the idea that written language, more so even than DNA, is the heritable code of humanity, and Linear B is one of the very first written human languages. This is a beautiful portal to 3,500 years ago. It turns out that people 3,500 years ago were people. They recorded things, they thought, they counted, the preserved themselves for us -- how freaking amazing is that?

I've never read anything by [a:Margalit Fox|650994|Margalit Fox|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1360786032p2/650994.jpg] before, but she really does justice to these compelling ideas. She never walks away from the "riddle" part of Linear B -- she drops tantalizing hints. Nothing compels reading like hearing: "and this tablet would be the key to solving the puzzle, 20 years later." Her narrative really reads like a mystery.

Finally, Fox is the first author to give Alice Kober her full due in the decryption and Fox does not give short shrift to the gender issues that have prevented Kober from being fully recognized until now. Fox obviously feels deeply for Kober, who died prematurely, likely of cancer -- she tells the story as a tragedy, and certainly that adds another layer of this story about learning of the humanity of our ancestors. ( )

excellent, easy read. from the rigors of codebreaking to Victorian archaeology to twentieth century academic small mindedness, a fascinating insight into how a written language can be deciphered. ( )

I had seen this book had been recently published on a website at some point, probably about the same time I finished In Search of the Trojan War as I was looking for more books to read about the time period. Several days ago I was at the library to pick up some holds and saw it in the science/linguistics section and snatched it up and took it home. I have been reading it pretty much non-stop until I finished.

To me the historical background, the detective story and the intensity that Alice Kober and later, Michael Ventris have in figuring out how to read a script and language that are no longer spoken is what drove my interest in reading this book.

About a year ago or more I read Michael Coe's Breaking the Maya Code and the thing that both these books had in common is the stubborn, elder colleague or discoverer who, out of some misplaced sense of control or possessiveness hinders the younger generation of scientists and colleagues from finding a solution. In the case of Mayan, Sir Eric Thompson and in the case of Linear B, Sir Arthur Evans.

Just reading about the roadblocks that these two people put up simply because they didn't want to be wrong or didn't want their fame to be in some way diminished made me shake my head in frustration.

Finally, Alice Kober deserves just as much credit in deciphering Linear B if not more than Michael Ventris. I can't help but admire the intellect and dogged, data-driven intensity she put into deciphering Linear B. I will never be a linguist having settled for a Bachelor's Degree in Russian Language but I find myself wanting to have a mind like hers. ( )