[Dazrin]

I enjoyed this quite a bit but only gave it 3 stars on GR but would have given it 3.5 if that was supported.

The outline of the book worked for me, the linear (ha!) timeline of Evans to Kober to Ventris worked well, The narrative is what put me off a bit. For a book with the stated goal of showing that Kober was the absolutely critical piece to solving the riddle of Linear B with quotes like this:

THIS IS THE TRUE STORY of one of the most mesmerizing riddles in Western history and, in particular, of the unsung American woman who would very likely have solved it had she only lived a little longer.

and this:

In recent years, Kober’s role in the decipherment has been likened to that of Rosalind Franklin, the English scientist now considered the unsung heroine of one of the most signal intellectual feats of the modern age, the mapping of the molecular structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson.

it felt like her role was downplayed and undermined by sections like this (emphasis mine):

Some of these, arrived at independently by Ventris after Kober’s death, would bring about its solution.

and this:

If her teaching load had not been so great, if her Guggenheim Fellowship had been renewed, if she had been hired at Penn after all, if Myres had not saddled her with a crushing secretarial load, if her champion John Franklin Daniel had lived—if she had lived—it is entirely possible that Alice Kober would have solved the riddle of Linear B.

That is a LOT of ifs. And it is still only "entirely possible" that Kober would have been able to solve it.

I certainly applaud her detail and organization and especially how much she was able to accomplish with so little to work with but as someone else said above, it isn't clear that she could have made the jump to Greek. That type of jump tends to speak of more intuition than the logical steps Kober was taking.

In the end it seems that her graph ended up being her largest contribution to the project. She gave Ventris the means to logically organize Linear B in a way that let him take the leap. The descriptions of him don't make me think he could have come up with that form of organization on his own while the descriptions of her make it sound like she would have happily gone on organizing till the end of time given a chance without taking the leap to actual sounds and then interpretation.

Was her contribution critical? I would say yes. At the very least Ventris was able to use her tool to enable his leap. If he hadn't had that to work with it may very well have taken extra years for someone to get to that point. Something we know Ventris didn't have.

Originally Posted by gmw

That aside, I am enjoying learning about the cracking of this puzzle and I think it is structured quite well. On one hand the author seems intent on emphasising that Kober was critical (and I don't doubt it), and may have solved the problem if she lived longer (anyone's guess), but has also (it seems to me) managed to show that Evans' lack of sharing is quite likely the biggest contributor to the delay in cracking the code, while Kober's sharing (published articles) aided subsequent work. So one of the very good things about this book is the demonstration that science is best played as a team sport.

I think this is spot on. Starting first with Evans, then with Myres, if there had been full information sharing of the tablet inscriptions and then more sharing of individual progress it is likely that the riddle would have been solved much earlier.