| View Larger Image | The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography | Paperbackby Simon Singh (Author)
| List Price: | $16.00 | | Price: | $10.88 | | You Save: | $5.12 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Anchor | | Edition: | Reprintth Edition | | Page Count: | 432 Pages | | Publication Date: | August 29, 2000 | | Sales Rank: | 4,720th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780385495325
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product 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 technological and mathematical explanations, and portrayals 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, what drives it, and how private that e-mail you just sent really is. |
Amazon.com Review
People love secrets. Ever since the first word was written, humans have sent coded messages to each other. In The Code Book, Simon Singh, author of the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, offers a peek into the world of cryptography and codes, from ancient texts through computer encryption. Singh's compelling history is woven through with stories of how codes and ciphers have played a vital role in warfare, politics, and royal intrigue. The major theme of The Code Book is what Singh calls "the ongoing evolutionary battle between codemakers and codebreakers," never more clear than in the chapters devoted to World War II. Cryptography came of age during that conflict, as secret communications became critical to both sides' success. Confronted with the prospect of defeat, the Allied cryptanalysts had worked night and day to penetrate German ciphers. It would appear that fear was the main driving force, and that adversity is one of the foundations of successful codebreaking. In the information age, the fear that drives cryptographic improvements is both capitalistic and libertarian--corporations need encryption to ensure that their secrets don't fall into the hands of competitors and regulators, and ordinary people need encryption to keep their everyday communications private in a free society. Similarly, the battles for greater decryption power come from said competitors and governments wary of insurrection. The Code Book is an excellent primer for those wishing to understand how the human need for privacy has manifested itself through cryptography. Singh's accessible style and clear explanations of complex algorithms cut through the arcane mathematical details without oversimplifying. --Therese Littleton |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 268 reviews)
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Fascinating! by Youssef Ragab  5 Stars
November 03, 2009
This book is about cryptology (a term that includes both code making or cryptography and code breaking or cryptanalysis). However, the primary focus is not the science of cryptology or its history although both are covered in sufficient detail. It is, rather, on people; the people who made the codes, the people who broke the codes and the people whose lives were affected by the codes. The book proceeds in a chronological manner as it follows the age old war between code makers and code breakers from the distant past to well into the future.
Singh explains the not-so-easy mathematics and technology behind code making and breaking in a vivid and very accessible style. Elusive topics such as the operation of the Enigma, the mathematics of RSA and the principals of quantum cryptology are so well explained that most readers will grasp them with a single reading. It is hard not to be inspired by this book. Many times you will find yourselves grabbing a sheet of papers and attempting to work out the codes yourself. The book provides a set of ciphers to work on your own and a list of further reading for those interested to follow up on Alice, Bob and Eve (hypothetical characters used to explain techniques in cryptology).
"Uijt jb b gjof cppl" replace each letter by the one that precedes it in the alphabet and you get "This is a fine book". This simple cipher, called the Cesar shift cipher, is one of the earliest known ciphers and is discussed in the first chapter which covers cryptology from ancient Greece until the fourteenth century and narrates the gripping tale of Mary Queen of the Scots. The second chapter covers the evolution of both cryptology and cryptanalysis until the 20th century and narrates, among others, the mysterious tale of Beales ciphers. The third and fourth chapters cover the evolution of cryptology during the first and second world wars and mainly concentrate on the operation and the cracking of the famous German Enigma machine. The fifth chapter covers the Navajo code talkers used by the US in WW2 as well as the inspiring tales of decipherment of Hieroglyphics mainly by Champollion and of Linear B by, among others, Michael Ventris. Chapters six and seven are about Modern Cryptology. They covers the story behind the ground breaking advancements in cryptography, e.g. public key cryptography, that fueled internet communication and commerce. It also ponders in some detail over the issue of privacy versus security. Chapter eight is about the future of Cryptology and how both code makers and code breakers are starting to make use of Quantum mechanics to take cryptology to a whole new level.
As mentioned earlier, this book is about people and it does a good job in paying tribute to many of the usually unsung heroes of cryptology.
All said, this is one of the most gripping, amusing and rewarding general science books; it even has instruction on hiding a message within a hardboiled egg!!
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The Code Book review by Keith Gover (Portland, Oregon) 5 Stars
October 29, 2009
This is an incredible book that walks the reader through the history of Cryptography in a form that is very easy and enjoyable to read. It stays at a pretty high level through most of the book but has enough technical detail to really help the reader understand the cryptograhic methods. This book has motivated me to continue my study of Cryptography.
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A series of true stories with a common theme by J. Sexton (NZ) 5 Stars
October 06, 2009
This is a great read, more of a series of short interesting stories about codemakers and codebreakers. It goes into some technical detail of methods used in cryptoanalysis for the more technically minded, extremely well researched with all the historical facts. One of the few books I read a second time.
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An excellent description of a seemingly complex concept by Anthony Wathen (Naches, WA USA) 5 Stars
September 28, 2009
If you guys have seen David Kahn's Codebreakers, then you must understand that the subject of cryptography is deep in variable and can be seen as one of the genius things occuring in history. However, if you prefer a smaller, quicker read, then this would definitely be it.
You'd think that something like this would be boring with all it's mathematical structures and algorithmic matrices, and even confusing at times, but Simon Singh describes his target subject very well. You will learn of the first methods of hiding methods, and several different methods of scrambling a method. You will learn about the DES (Data Encryption Standard), and about the many people that made such things possible. You will understand that there were several political figures in the past that have used ciphers to discover someone planning to conspire against them or planning to assassinate them, and it will even give you some history on the mysterious Beale cipher that supposedly has never been solved because a key was never given, although the man given these papers successfully deciphered one of these papers with the Declaration of Independence.
Overall, this book was a very engaging read, an excellent covered subject, and was definitely worth such explanation. I hope in the future when they create the newer and bigger Data Encryption Standard, I'm there to understand how it came about and where it originated from (Maybe being a second version of the RSA cipher (Or in simpler terms the Rivest-Shamin-Adleman cipher)).
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The Code Book: THe Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Mitchell Wu 5 Stars
September 23, 2009
Amazing and touching stories with incredible insights of knowledge. Cryptography becomes interesting, intriguing, fun and highly readable under the author's writings. I never bother to write a book review and I think it is only fair to write one and recommend it to the readers for all the efforts the author has put into this book.
It is also very educational to kids even they are not into science (how can they not to if just be "naturally" curious) . For example, the story of Decipherment of Linear B. And it is also a very moving story behind how ARS becomes RSA of public key cryptography. I see the integrity and dignity of those intellectuals. Apparently they are the role models for kids.
This book worths million dollars more to me.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
by SIMON SINGH (Author), JOHN LYNCH (Foreword)
xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution"I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years. In Fermat's...
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| Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing (Test Your Code Breaking Skills)
by Martin Gardner (Author)
Experiment with cryptography—the science of secret writing. Cipher and decipher codes: transposition and polyalphabetical ciphers, famous codes, typewriter and telephone codes, codes that use playing cards, knots, and swizzle sticks...even invisible writing and sending messages through outer space. Hours of intrigue and challenge. 45 diagrams.
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| Cryptanalysis
by Helen F. Gaines (Author)
Thorough, systematic introduction to serious cryptography, especially strong in modern forms of cipher solution used by experts. Nihilist, grille, U. S. Army, key-phrase, multiple-alphabet, Gronsfeld, Porta, Beaufort, periodic ciphers and more. Simple and advanced methods. 166 specimens to solve—with solutions.
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| Cryptography Decrypted
by H. X. Mel (Author), Doris M. Baker (Author)
(Pearson Education) A tutorial in digital cryptography, for readers at any level of experience. Requires no technical or mathematical expertise, but does include appendices for those who have it. Topics covered include public and private keys, hashes and message digests, cryptographic attacks, and digital signatures. Softcover. DLC: Computer security.
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| Cryptography: The Science of Secret Writing
by Laurence D. Smith (Author)
Elementary account of ciphers, history, types, etc., with 151 examples of ciphers and codes. Solutions. Good introduction for beginners.
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