The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography Author: Simon Singh | Language: English | ISBN:
B004IK8PLE | Format: PDF
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography Description
In his first book since the bestselling
Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure,
The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.
Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world's most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history and what drives it. It will also make yo wonder how private that e-mail you just sent really is.
From the Trade Paperback edition.- File Size: 14435 KB
- Print Length: 432 pages
- Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (January 26, 2011)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B004IK8PLE
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,461 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Education & Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Linguistics - #11
in Books > Computers & Technology > Security & Encryption > Encryption - #11
in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Algorithms > Cryptography
- #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Education & Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Linguistics - #11
in Books > Computers & Technology > Security & Encryption > Encryption - #11
in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Algorithms > Cryptography
Not really in any substantive sense a history of cryptography, this book gives one very much the same feeling as if watching a well done television documentary. This is not particularly surprising, as the author works on programs such as PBS' "Nova" in his day job. This makes the book an easy and pleasant read, but it chooses its focus rather oddly, often emphasizing persons and events out of all logical proportion to their real historical significance. In fairness, the author does concede that he is not attempting to write a history of cryptography, as that has already been done comprehensively by others, especially David Kahn ("The Codebreakers," recently reprinted). While Americans are given inappropriately little attention until the chapter on public-key cryptography -- I think William F. Friedman is mentioned once in passing, and Herbert O. Yardley perhaps twice -- the selection of subject matter is a refreshing change from the usual stories that are rehashed over and over in most books on cryptography. It is particularly nice to see the British WWII cryptanalytic efforts at Bletchley Park being given their due, since Bletchley's people such as Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers have had to suffer from their work being kept secret until several years after Kahn's and most of the other principal histories had been written. The acknowledgement of the early Polish effort with German Enigma which made the British effort possible is also comparatively rare, again mostly because of the secrecy which until recently surrounded the matter, but it is likewise long overdue.
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