The codebreakers : the story of secret writing

Resource Information

The work The codebreakers : the story of secret writing represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Randwick City Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The codebreakers : the story of secret writing

Title remainder

the story of secret writing

Statement of responsibility

David Kahn

Title variation

Story of secret writing

Creator

• Kahn, David, 1930-

Subject

• Cryptography -- History

Language

eng

Summary

• Man has created codes to keep secrets and has broken codes to learn those secrets since the time of the Pharaohs. For 4,000 years, fierce battles have been waged between codemakers and codebreakers, and the story of these battles is civilization's secret history, the hidden account of how wars were won and lost, diplomatic intrigues foiled, business secrets stolen, governments ruined, computers hacked. From the XYZ Affair to the Dreyfus Affair, from the Gallic War to the Persian Gulf, from Druidic runes and the kaballah to outer space, from the Zimmermann telegram to Enigma to the Manhattan Project, codebreaking has shaped the course of human events to an extent beyond any easy reckoning. Once a government monopoly, cryptology today touches everybody. It secures the Internet, keeps e-mail private, maintains the integrity of cash machine transactions, and scrambles TV signals on unpaid-for channels
• David Kahn's The Codebreakers takes the measure of what codes and codebreaking have meant in human history in a single comprehensive account, astonishing in its scope and enthralling in its execution. Hailed upon first publication as a book likely to become the definitive work of its kind, The Codebreakers has more than lived up to that prediction: it remains unsurpassed. With a brilliant new chapter that makes use of previously classified documents to bring the book thoroughly up to date, and to explore the myriad ways computer codes and their hackers are changing all of our lives, The Codebreakers is the skeleton key to a thousand thrilling true stories of intrigue, mystery, and adventure. It is a masterpiece of the historian's art

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

652.8

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography