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List Price: $24.95 Our Price: $17.47 You Save: $7.48 (30%) Hardcover - 384 pages (February 1998) St Martins Pr (Trade) , Dimensions: (in inches): 1.29 x 8.60 x 5.93 Digital Fortress by Dan Brown This book came in too late to be featured in our Holiday gift guide, but you can bet it's in this year's. Digital Fortress is a sobering novel on the world of computers. While it's fiction, much of it is so thought provoding you'll begin to get paranoid every time you log onto the web. The beginning of the book opens with a somewhat tedious explanation of code breaking and national secrets stored electronically -- so I warn you, don't let this bog you down. Once you know what they're talking about you will emerse yourself in the deepest darkest, and freightening aspects of international computer intrigue. Dan Brown's Digital Fortress takes off in a search for a golden ring to preserve national security. At the center of the tale is Susan Fletcher, cryptographer and mathematician, her mentor, patriotic Commander Trevor Strathmore, and her fiance, linguist David Becker. Each use their especial talents in finding the ring and unraveling its secrets to protect and secure the safety of the United States. Fletcher and Strathmore are closeted in the nation's capital with the world's largest computer to find the evil perpetrator and his partner electronically, while Becker seeks the ring itself in the cathedrals, parks, and hotels of Barcelona. The story itself is fairly compelling, both in the threat posed by the scores terrorists and drug dealers reputedly employing the internet to wreck havoc, and in the idea that the United States government is organized enough to have such problems well under control. Although both notions stretch the bounds of probability, its all amusing enough to consider. In most thrillers, "hardware" consists of big guns, airplanes, military vehicles, and weapons that make things explode. In this thriller the hardware is disc drives and computers -- this is an Internet user's spy novel where the good guys and bad guys struggle over secrets somewhat more intellectual than just where the secret formula is hidden--they have to gain understanding of what the secret formula actually is. Keywords: Business: Marketing, eCommerce, Office management, promotion, security (Business), - 11/27/99