The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking

The Code Book contains many fascinating accounts of code-breaking in action, from its use in unmasking the Man in the Iron Mask and the defeat of the Nazis to the breaking of a modern cipher system by a world-wide army of amateurs in 1994. It is especially good on the most recent developments, such as quantum cryptology and the thorny civil liberties issues raised by the advent of very secure cipher systems over the Internet. But Singh's mathematical prowess sometimes gets the better of his journalistic instincts, leading to technical descriptions that unnecessarily disrupt the narrative flow. So buy it--and have a shot at the 10,000 pound mystery cipher--but be prepared to skip. --Robert Matthews

Reader Reviews:

Very readable... (0/0 people found this helpful)

I came across this by accident after reading the same author's book on Fermat's Last Theroem.

Simon Singh style matches exactly what I want from a science book. Very readable and dumbed down just enough for me to understand the complex topics but certainly not "Janet and John".

This book does not attempt (quite rightly) to enthuse people that are not bothered. There is no attempt to sex things up - if you like science, the science is sexy enough. And it assumes you have a pretty good grasp of maths and science (maybe to 'A' level).

My Favorite Non-Fiction Book (1/1 people found this helpful)

This is my favourite non-fiction book. Why? Well it's an interesting and intriguing topic, its well written and an easy read but the key (excuse the bad pun) for me is that Singh strikes the perfect balance of giving you a taster of a technique, explaining it significance and giving examples of this with some great real world examples.

The opening chapter exemplifies this with how it describes Mary Queen of Scots use of a cryptography technique and the unfortunate results it had for her when they were intercepted and eventually decoded.

Knowing little about nano technology I found this chapter near the end very difficult to follow but Singh does well to describe it in a way that did at least give me half a chance at understanding it.

The book was written to accompany his UK Channel 4 TV series; having seen only one episode of it I can say it certainly stand on its own two feet.

If you want a great introduction to this subject I can not see you doing any better than this book. I don't think you have to have a strong interest in the subject to enjoy it. I suspect older kids could get into it easily and there's examples to try on his web site.

Great insight into the history of code (1/1 people found this helpful)

When I first picked up this book I was a bit worried I would need a triple degree in mathematics, a calculator and lots of paper. My fears were very quickly allayed and I immediately found this to be an easy-to-read historical narrative on coding and decoding, introducing the distinction between steganography and cryptography.

Throughout, Singh focuses on what he sees as a battle between the cryptanalyst and the cryptographer... the cryptographer uses a new technique which is "unbreakable"... the cryptanalyst breaks it some time later.... The cryptographer comes up with a new idea... that too is broken some time later... and so on.

The author cleverly weaves this into a general history of where these techniques have affected the history, such as the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and the Second World War. A detailed history is given of Enigma, explaining how the system was used and how it was decrypted, as well as introducing newer techniques such as RSA and PGP.

Definitely a worthwhile read - examples are also given so you can follow how each encryption and decryption technique actually works.

An Excellent Historical Perspective on Steganography, Cryptography and Cryptoanalysis (0/3 people found this helpful)

Simon Singh has done a remarkable job at explaining the origins of various message scrambling mechanisms, such as steganography, cryptography, keys and cryptoanalysis and his writing style is very methodological.

Starting with definitions of various terms he then illustrates how various methods were used in througout history.

Insight into the history of codes and ciphers (0/1 people found this helpful)

This is a book which I started reading after hearing a brief lecture on the subject of cryptology. Whilest reading I was fasinated by the detailed stories and hidden tales of the codemaking/codebreaking world. This book is about the intellectual battle between the codebreakers and the codebreakers. Spanning from the Egyptians to the present day and even including an insight to the future this is a very good introduction to the world of ciphers.

The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking

Simon Singh

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