Wow, what a sprawling book. Big enough to serve as a decent door stop in a minor gale. Characters and events galore. All tied together by the invention of the digital computer in WW2 for the Brits (using mercury) and the Americans (using vacuum tubes) and cryptology and cryptanalysis, then and today, more or less, for the creation of an Internet data haven in a fictitious monarchy in the vicinity of Malaysia.
Along the way, there are submarines, gold bullion, Guadalcanal, Douglas MacArthur, lawsuits, computer hacking, and the harrowing creation of (and escape from) a granite crypt for the storage of stolen German and Nipponese gold. That ought to be enough to interest anyone. Although the author, Neal Stephenson, is generally considered a science fiction writer, there seems to be little enough of scifi in this tale. But it suffers not a bit for the lack thereof. Heckuva read.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 