The Code Book - Simon Singh

I have absolutely no clue as to why I picked up this book. It wasn’t spectacularly cheap. The book is a narration on cryptography and how it has evolved over time. So the subject is nothing that I have ever been interested in. It was certainly not going to help me in my career in any way. But yet… I picked it up. Perhaps it was the cover. It is indeed a very well designed cover, great title, great tag line, and the overall look is the kind that promises answers to a lot of mysteries of life. (It is quite mystical, the way the sub-conscious works and drives us to do things that we think we wouldn’t do) What a cardinal sin! I judged a book by its cover! For once though, I was right on the money.

The book is, as I said, on cryptography, which, for the uninitiated, is the science of manipulating messages so that only the intended receiver can understand them. The book could have been very text-bookish, with one method of encryption explained after another. But Simon Singh displays the flair of an accomplished novelist in the book as he narrates the growth of cryptography over the ages like a riveting story.

The author talks about cryptography as a battle between cryptographers and cryptanalysts, i.e. the code-makers and the code-breakers. One is the good and the other evil, depending on the side you happen to be. Therefore, the book almost has a screen play like a movie, with the focus not on the protagonist or the villain, but on the actual battle. Of course the code makers and breakers are given their due credit. But what is fascinating is the process of cryptography and the enormous impact it has had on the world we live in. So be it the simple mono-alphabetic substitution cipher which took a couple of centuries to break, or the Vignere cipher which was considered unbreakable, or be it the Enigma, the mechanical cipher, which presented a challenge to the cryptanalysts like never before. All these were eventually broken and we saw the coming of the public key cryptography, something that is used in the present day, which will be broken, only when quantum computers are ready to join the party, or so the author claims. The whole evolution makes for an absorbing read. There is a slight detour that the author takes to describe how ancient languages were deciphered, which is quite intriguing as well. To think that there are people smart enough to figure out how a language was actually “spoken” just by studying some written texts makes me feel so mediocre about myself! And as the author unfolds all these scientific details about cryptography and cryptanalysis, he makes it a point to keep it simple for the laymen like me, and sprinkles a healthy dose of anecdotes to keep the reader entertained.

The author displays an amazing intuitive understanding of a reader’s psyche. Loading the book with facts would have been dreary, because we are not going to remember the dates and the names anyways. (Atleast I don’t) Having only the cryptographic details would have made the book as dull as a text-book, as I have already pointed out. And having only entertaining anecdotes would have made the book a collection of articles from a tabloid with no light being shed on the cryptography part of it. To balance all the three components so that the reader feels absolutely satisfied when she finishes the book is quite a daunting task, and Simon Singh has achieved that beautifully.

So what if you have nothing to do with cryptography? If you ever wanted some entertaining non-fiction, The Code Book is the book for you. And oh, in case you manage to solve the Beale Mystery which the author talks about, you might just end up becoming a millionaire. Now are you interested?