In 1942, General Erwin Rommel led his Axis army swiftly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Even as Rommel received detailed updates on British positions, Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, deciphering the Enigma Code. Telling the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, Gershom Gorenberg portrays the conflict not as a clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war.

"A masterpiece of scholarship and synthesis…. The highest praise that can be bestowed on his book is that it will remind readers of a cloak-and-dagger tale by John Le Carré."—Washington Post