The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

My old boss used to keep a copy of this lying around in the office (think, "throne room"), and I eventually read the whole thing. It was a well written, fascinating and well paced read of the history and technology of cryptography.That was years ago.I recently decided to buy my own copy and give a re-read.

This is a very well written and entertaining book that covers codes from the earliest ones to quantum computer codes. I liked the balance between historical information and some details about how codes and ciphers are created and broken. The book is written for a general audience, but also contains a lot of somewhat technical information, but is not so mathematical as to be inaccessible for most readers. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in codes, ciphers and some of the privacy issues that are entailed with the use and decryption of them.What is in the book –The book goes beyond many others in the area of codes and ciphers in that it discusses very up to date topics (at least up to 1999 when the book was written), such as the ciphers being used for Internet transactions and questions of privacy and code breaking. The book also covers material on the deciphering of hieroglyphics and Linear-B, which are not covered in other books on codes. I found the sections on the techniques used to decipher messages enciphered with a Vigenére table and the algorithms employed by the DES and RSA systems to be very clear and enlightening. The book contains information on the Enigma machine and the work at Bletchley Park in Britain to decipher the messages sent on it. However, this material is not as detailed as the material in books such as Budainsky’s “Battle of Wits”, Kahn’s “Seizing the Enigma” or Sebag-Montefiore’s “The Battle for the Code”, so if this is your primary interest I would direct you to these sources. However, if your interest is more general then I think that “The Code Book” is an excellent choice.

Like all narrative non-fictional works that, eventually in this case, deal with technical subjects whose details are beyond the scope of the non-specialist reader, this book attempts to strike a balance between two extremes, between a book so chock-full of technical detail that it reads like a textbook and a book that skimps so completely on the heart of the matter at hand that it can only be described as fluff. Singh has done a remarkable job in balancing the two here, it seems to me, and the book is worth any reader's time whose interest is piqued by cryptography.Singh is singularly aided by his subject matter here. This book was recommended to me by a fellow poster on a crossword puzzle blog which I frequent, as a daily solver of the New York Times crossword. The discussions on the blog vary from the whimsical to the technical with all manner of things mooted. So goes Singh's book as well. But what makes this possible is that cryptography and cryptanalysis, for most of human history, has been no more complex, au fond, than a very difficult crossword puzzle. And one is not surprised to see a crossword used during WWII by the British to test potential candidates for work at top secret Bletchley Park, which was responsible for cracking Germany's "Enigma" code. The crossword is provided in the book and was jolly fun to solve.It seems to me that up to the Vigenère polyalphabetic coding, known for centuries as "le chiffre indéchifferable", anyone with an interest in this book could understand and create such a cipher and write an encrypted message in it. Indeed, it's in deciphering such messages without the "keyword" that the technical going gets somewhat involved and perhaps beyond the ken of some readers not familiar with basic statistical analysis, and, not coincidentally, this decipherment of such encryptions is where maths starts to predominate. But it's certainly not difficult to understand the concept of how these encryptions are deciphered, it's merely very tedious and painstaking to do it as Charles Babbage finally did in the 19th Century.Up to this point, for this reader in any event, no trade-off was necessary and Singh is free to fill his tale of codes and ciphers with histories which hinge upon them, starting with the life and death of Mary, Queen of Scots. Also, he makes an elegant segue in the tale of how the Linear B tablets were finally translated, and the toing and froing of certain egotistical archaeologists etc. - It should be noted here the final decipherment and translation of Linear B was the cumulative work of men (and one woman) of genius who were linguistic prodigies. - Again, pass the 19th century and the non-specialist becomes more than a tad lost in the, literally and figuratively, nuts and bolts of Enigma machines and multi-lingual scholarship and fluency.Thus, it's no surprise that the ending of the book was the weakest part for me. Though it must be said that Singh goes out of his way to use "Alice, Bob, Eve" analogies to make the concepts clearer most effectively, being able to do what the main players in the tale are doing is far beyond the amateur's grasp. Also, the book is thirteen years old and the final sections dealing with computer encryption seem a bit dated already.In sum though, a very pleasing, well-written book about the perennial human need to keep matters secret.

Full of history! Good read!

Originally got this book as it was a required reading for one of my linguistic courses. However, I eventually found myself reading this book purely for leisure as the storytelling and content is extremely interesting and captivating even for someone not particularly familiar with the content at first.

I've been developing an interest in physics as well as cryptography. I was turned on to Singh's The Code Book simply because it mentioned quantum physics in the title, a happy intersection between my two new hobby subjects. Soon after cracking it open, I realized that I'd picked up one of my favorite books in the past few years.Singh does a great job of laying out the history of cryptography (code writing) and cryptanalysis (code breaking, essentially) as well as explaining the logic behind each of the codes he discusses. It's a fascinating history that builds and builds upon itself, making it clear to the reader how the cryptography readily available to him/her now was born. All the while, Singh's explanation of the thought behind the codes is clear enough for a non-math major to quickly grasp (i.e. myself).I admit that the subject matter was right up my alley and this might not be the case for everyone, but I feel Singh's ability to weave a narrative into a convoluted subject (as it would be) is excellent and warrants a pick up. The history is sturdy enough to support just about any reader and the analysis of the logic is clear and simple to latch on to, even as it delves into some deeper details.In all, this was a great read and I'd highly recommend picking it up.