The Code Book (Simon Singh)

Genre: Nonfiction
Year Published: 1999

Some people's blood races when they read stories about war. These are the people who keep a Michael Shaara book by their bedside, who participate in reenactments, who spend their Friday nights playing Risk.

But there's another side of war, one filled with warriors who don't wield guns or crouch in trenches. Their purview is communication, both protecting their government's messages and finding out what their enemies are saying. They are cryptologists, and their story is the largely unwritten side of military history. And for me, as a mathematician, that's what makes my pulse speed up, to read about those breakthroughs, especially as they so often happened as countries clashed on the battlefield.

I was actually surprised by the visceral reaction I had as I was swept up in the various races to create and break ciphers, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. No one does pop science better than Simon Singh (between this and Fermat's Enigma, he is, as far as I'm concerned, to math lit as Ina Garten is to cookbooks). I could say a thousand wonderful things about him, but the highest praise I can give him is that he is the least lazy writer I can think of. He cuts no corners; he does enormous amounts of research, including interviews with all the relevant living people; and he always ensures that difficult concepts are presented clearly, in multiple ways.

Because of his deep commitment to his readers, the average reader should be able to understand all the concepts in this book with no trouble. The final chapter, which deals with quantum physics, may be a little beyond the comprehension of non-scientists, but everything else is perfectly lucid.

I only wish that Singh would write an updated, post-9/11 version of this book. The section on privacy versus national security is already terribly outdated.

Recommended? If you're going to read one "educational" book this year, it should be this one.