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The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anchor; Reprint edition (August 29, 2000)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0385495323


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 25


Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1310L


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.88 x 7.98 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #19,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #4 in Web Encryption #15 in Linguistics Reference #53 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)


#4 in Web Encryption:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • One of the best books I’ve ever had to read for class
I don’t read that much anymore. I bought this book as required reading for a class but I would read it even on my own. Super interesting read that I’m going to recommend to my dad as well. Easy to follow and written in a narrative way that keeps your interest. Definitely one of the best books I’ve had to read for class. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2024 by Mickey
    • Entertaining and enlightening
This is a very well written and entertaining book that covers codes from the earliest ones to quantum computer codes. I liked the balance between historical information and some details about how codes and ciphers are created and broken. The book is written for a general audience, but also contains a lot of somewhat technical information, but is not so mathematical as to be inaccessible for most readers. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in codes, ciphers and some of the privacy issues that are entailed with the use and decryption of them. What is in the book – The book goes beyond many others in the area of codes and ciphers in that it discusses very up to date topics (at least up to 1999 when the book was written), such as the ciphers being used for Internet transactions and questions of privacy and code breaking. The book also covers material on the deciphering of hieroglyphics and Linear-B, which are not covered in other books on codes. I found the sections on the techniques used to decipher messages enciphered with a Vigenére table and the algorithms employed by the DES and RSA systems to be very clear and enlightening. The book contains information on the Enigma machine and the work at Bletchley Park in Britain to decipher the messages sent on it. However, this material is not as detailed as the material in books such as Budainsky’s “Battle of Wits”, Kahn’s “Seizing the Enigma” or Sebag-Montefiore’s “The Battle for the Code”, so if this is your primary interest I would direct you to these sources. However, if your interest is more general then I think that “The Code Book” is an excellent choice. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2014 by Metallurgist
    • An intelligent mix of history and how-to
In The Code Book, British author and physicist Simon Singh provides a history of cryptography from ancient times to the present. This is a popular science book aimed at general readers, so the text is accessible and isn’t bogged down with incomprehensible mathematical jargon. It’s still an intellectually challenging read, however, and those who are interested in the arcane details of this subject will find it quite entertaining. Singh explains that The Code Book is really more about ciphers than about codes, but The Cipher Book just wouldn’t sound as cool. Every time someone writes a book about cryptography for the general reader, some fundamentals must be covered. First of all, the author must explain how a simple alphabetic substitution cipher works (each letter in the alphabet is substituted for another). Then, the writer must explain how to solve such a cipher using frequency analysis (the most commonly used letter in the ciphertext, for example, is likely to represent E, the most common letter in the English alphabet, and so on). Anyone with an interest in cryptography already knows about these elementary matters, but they must be included in order to lay the foundation for the discussion and to educate newcomers to the subject. It’s no small feat that Singh manages to explain these basics in an articulate way that novices can understand but won’t bore the pants off those who already know what he’s talking about. The Code Book is a fascinating mix of cryptographic history and practical knowledge on how ciphers are created and cracked. Singh doesn’t just talk about how ciphers were used in the past and show you some examples. He really gives you an understanding of how each cipher works and the motivation behind its development. There’s an entire chapter, for example, on the Nazis’ World War II code machine named Enigma. The reader comes away with a pretty thorough understanding of that mechanism’s cryptographic process. This is followed by another chapter about how the Allies cracked the Enigma cipher. From there, Singh goes into digital cryptography. To some extent, computer-generated ciphers are too complex for the unaided human mind to unravel, but Singh still does a great job of explaining the methods and mathematics behind today’s digital encryption. Finally, Singh moves into quantum cryptography and quantum computing. In order to discuss these topics, he has to give the reader a nutshell overview of quantum mechanics, which he manages to do quite eloquently. Singh goes off on some digressions that feel unnecessary. In the first chapter, I don’t think I needed a complete biography of Mary Queen of Scots to figure out how her cipher worked, and the discussion of cryptography really got lost amid all the historical context. Singh also spends half a chapter on the decipherment of ancient languages, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics and Linear B. While I’m interested in that subject, it feels out of place here because it ventures more into linguistics than cryptography. The Code Book was published in 1999, so it only covers the history of cryptography up to that point. A lot has happened since then. Singh writes about identity theft and personal data leaks as if they were events bound to happen in the future, not the common occurrences of today. Although he covers the initial scientific investigations into quantum computing, further developments have occurred in the past two decades. This is a history book, after all, and the present never stays the present forever. As a historical summary of cryptography up to the year 2000, it’s hard to imagine a better one-volume treatment than this. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2023 by Karl Janssen
    • For people that enjoy the history and science genres
For people that enjoy the history and science genres, this is the perfect book. You get a balance of the history of ciphers and encryption over the course of human history while also learning about the technical details of how ciphers and encryption work (and how they are broken). The Code Book is extremely well written and after finishing it you really do feel like you learned something. Some other great aspects of this book are a Cipher Challenge at the end which allows you to test your codebreaking skills as well as multiple appendices for those who want to go even deeper into the technical areas of ciphers and encryption. My only complaint about this book is that it's aging. It was written in 1999, and the world of computing has changed a lot from 1999-2018. But don't let this fact deter you from reading The Code Book. The historical cipher/encryption knowledge that you learn about in the World Wars and the dawn of computing are very interesting. Even if you only want to focus on the modern aspects of encryption, I still recommend reading this book and then picking up something more modern after. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2018 by George

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