The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet
“Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break,” writes David Kahn in this massive (almost 1,200 pages) volume. Most of The Codebreakers focuses on the 20th century, especially World War II. But its reach is long. Kahn traces cryptology’s origins to the advent of writing. It seems that as soon as people learned how to record their thoughts, they tried to figure out ways of keeping them hidden. Kahn covers everything from the theory of ciphering to the search for “messages” from outer space. He concludes with a few thoughts about encryption on the Internet.
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March 21st, 2007 21:27
Note that this is an abridged edition of the book, published as a paperback. It is only about 450 text pages long (plus index and contents), not the full 1200 pages of the hardback version described above.
April 9th, 2007 07:21
Sounds intriguing. Thanks. Like the brief description explains, we continually want privacy.