Singh, Simon - The Code Book

[oyceter]

(subtitle: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography)

Er, this book is precisely on what the subtitle says. Singh basically takes the reader through the development of codes and ciphers throughout history, stopping to observe particularly historic moments for cryptography, along with going behind the people who made the major breakthroughs.

(An as-you-know-Bob: Codes encrypt by replacing entire words or phrases by other words or phrases while ciphers encrypt via letter substitution.)

I usually read non-fiction very, very slowly (think months), but I went through this book very quickly. Singh's prose isn't remarkable, but it is extremely clear without being dull, and he has a real gift for explaining things not only so I understand them, but so that I also get why the ideas or breakthroughs were really cool and exciting. While this may sound like damning with faint praise, I think it really is a very difficult thing to do, to write in prose so clear that the reader doesn't notice it and still manage to convey both ideas and emotion. I only wish more non-fiction writers could do this (Feynman was also really, really good at this. Plus, Feynman was funny). Singh also manages to relate the history of cryptography so that it feels like a story; there's dramatic tension and everything, which made the book not-so-ideal before-bed reading (I kept doing the "Just one more chapter.... just one more..." thing).

I'm not sure what my favorite parts were, because they were all pretty fascinating. Some highlights were the discussion of the importance of cryptography and cryptanalysts during World War II, and of course, the famous breaking of the Enigma cypher, which made me very geekily happy. Singh goes into how the Enigma machine worked and the various strategies different people used to try and crack it, and well, it was riveting! I swear, it was. The other part that made me very, very geekily happy was the decipherment of Linear B, an ancient language found on Crete, and when I was reading it, I just wanted to squee and wave my hands and yelp "Wow, that's SO COOL!" But then, I very much like puzzles and crosswords and the processes of figuring things out.

And Singh even manages to explain quantum cryptography (really odd stuff) in a way that I can sort of grasp -- I figure he is simplifying a great deal, so very mathy people (i.e. yhlee and fannishly) may be sort of annoyed by how he glosses over things, but it was quite illuminating for a layperson.

Anyhow, this was a really fun read, and now I want to pick up Singh's Fermat's Enigma. I like these mathy sciencey things, but usually the authors lose me because I have basically zero background, so it was nice to find something that I could sort of get and get excited about as well!

Links:
- furyofvissarion's review

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Actually, I only got halfway through because I was borrowing it from yuneicorn during grad school and other things took priority, but that first half was clearly written and engaging, and I liked it quite a lot. I am not, for example, deeply versed in the ways of Enigma, but the other parts had enough of the math parts in that I could identify what was going on. (Incidentally, my last quarter at Stanford I did take an applied algebra cryptography course.) I'd like to finish it; I dropped the quantum cryptography seminar senior year at college because I was already overloaded on classes, and I never went back to the topic, although I have some general idea of some concepts. (My lack of QM background would hamper me for deeper math. Even though I like to snicker at Dirac's "bra" and "ket" notation.)

[oyceter]

The rest is quite cool too! I really want to play around with an Enigma replica or something.

And wow... quantum cryptography seminar. That just sounds so very, very neat.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

It was a great seminar; Prof. N. David Mermin taught it, and he is wonderful. I regret that my workload didn't accommodate the work it would have taken on top of everything else.