The Code Book

by Simon Singh

Paperback, 416 pages

Published June 8, 2000 by Fourth Estate.

ISBN:: 978-1-85702-889-8

(62 reviews)

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography is a book by Simon Singh, published in 1999 by Fourth Estate and Doubleday. The Code Book describes some illustrative highlights in the history of cryptography, drawn from both of its principal branches, codes and ciphers. Thus the book's title should not be misconstrued as suggesting that the book deals only with codes, and not with ciphers; or that the book is in fact a codebook.

31 editions

technicat reviewed The Code Book by Simon Singh

Both a fascinating history and accessible primer

5 stars

One thing that's missing in the teaching of computer science is history (think Ada) and there's no better example than the history cryptography, with famous ciphers going back to Caesar. It just gets juicer over the centuries, with the technical that details that normally might deaden your attention span plainly explained by the author. And now I think I have a handle on quantum cryptography. But as another review here noted, this book was published a few decades ago, so what have I missed?

Alex M reviewed The Code Book by Simon Singh

Review of 'The Code Book' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Almost everything about this book is great. Simon Singh is a wonderful story teller. He manages to get through the science without dumbing it down. From ancient monoalphabetic codes to quantum cryptography, the book is an enthralling read. Why "almost"? At this point the book is over 20 years old, and things move fast in the computer cryptography world. For example the use of DES has long been discouraged. But that's not the book's fault of course.

ospalh reviewed The Code Book by Simon Singh

Review of 'The Code Book' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Great BBC style writing

Rainer reviewed The Code Book by Simon Singh

Review of 'The Code Book' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This book is incredible. It walks you through the entire history of cryptography, while teaching the reader about how every important cipher works in detail, along with the methodology for decryption.

My only disappointment with this book is that it was published in the late 90's before the Internet as we know it was fully implemented. An updated edition would be very helpful.

Kevin B. O'Brien reviewed The Code Book by Simon Singh

Review of 'The Code Book' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This book is a very good review of the history on encryption and explains the basic principles involved. It is a lot like David Kahn's The Code Breakers, but is available for a good deal less. Beginning with Herodotus and some secrecy measures from The Persian Wars, it then moves forward with Arab scholars, medieval developments, and right up to asymmetric public key encryption used today. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to get an overview of what the issues are, but is not looking to dive into the mathematics.