The Codebreakers
It took me more than a year and two runs at it to finish reading David Kahn’s The Codebreakers. Not because it’s a bad book, by any means. In fact, it’s great. But it’s also long. 1200 or so pages long. That’s a lot of book. Each chapter is dense with information, pointers to other related material and packed with thought provoking insight.
It’s a very rewarding book to read but for me was very time consuming. If you found something like Applied Cryptography too mathy and other books on crypto too fluffy, this book does a pretty decent job of combining human interest with the underlying math involved. Has pictures and representations of some primary source material you might not have seen before.
Who might enjoy this book
- People interested in cryptography (duh)
- People looking for a really heavy book which they can savor for a long time
Tags: crypto, nonfiction
February 9th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Ah, I was thinking about reading this one (though I like Applied Cryptography, it was actually a textbook for school). I think this may be the right book for one of my coworkers who is having trouble with Applied Cryptography.
February 9th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Yeah, this is more like a historical big picture view of cryptography as a field so it’s good for someone looking to gain perspective.