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I thought this solid but not stellar. I like both puzzles and ancient history, so this played to both interests.
I was absolutely fascinated by it, by the account of the deciperment. I thought it gave a good feel for both the grunt work involved and the inspired guesses that were equally necessary. I also thought it described linear B and the approaches taken very well, although I found the comparisons to English and Latin to be of more of a dunderhead nature. It's tough to hit the right note with this kind of explanation, especially when what the reader brings to it will be all over the place.
I also was interested in the understory of how Kober's being a woman hindered her, from being her mother's caretaker to the jobs she could get to being used as a glorified secretary. And also her inability to say no; the need for a woman to propitiate rather than strike out on her own course.
Overall, though, I thought the whole account was rather skimpy. Not enough primary resources on Kober, and the Evans and Ventris sections, necessary because the Kober story would be meaningless without that context, were only secondary source retellings. But also interesting to me in that context is how Ventris was a throwback to the earlier age of archeologists, that of the wealthy amateur. I wonder to what extent the antipathy between Korber and Evans was that of one marginalized person for another? Korber resented Evans rich amateur male who had the leisure and the resources to follow his bent, and Evans could allow himself to feel contemptuous toward the Jewish American woman academic who had the training he lacked.
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