Obsolete Your Idols » nonfiction http://blog.manjusri.org Book Reviews and Blather Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:46:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The Codebreakers http://blog.manjusri.org/2008/02/09/secret-writing/ http://blog.manjusri.org/2008/02/09/secret-writing/#comments Sun, 10 Feb 2008 04:39:54 +0000 binder http://blog.manjusri.org/2008/02/09/secret-writing/ 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
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