Rating: 
Summary: I couldn't put it down, and it made me want to know more
Review: . . . which is about as much you can ask or say of a good non-fiction book.
Rating:
Summary: The one writer trusted by CypherPunks to get the story right
Review: ... is Stephen Levy.I am not myself a CypherPunk (a term self-chosen by the community, not a perjorative assigned to them by outsiders), but I am a member of the DC-CypherPunks mailing list. Many people on this list are real CypherPunks. We've even got a couple of real-world cryptographers, a world-respected net.journalist (Declan McCullough), and an acknowledged net.author (Dave Banisar). We had a party to celebrate the expiration of the Diffie-Hellman patent, and we were honored to have Whit Diffie himself attending. While I wasn't there thirty years ago, I have personally met some of the people who were, and who have been in the trenches during the ensuing battle. Every single person on the list who has expressed an opinion on the subject says that Stephen Levy is the only author they trust to tell the story the way it is (and was). I don't actually have my copy yet, but I have read excerpts, and I have heard nothing but the best from the people who've actually been there. I'd give it three thumbs-up, if I had an extra.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid Journalism, Mediocre Literature
Review: According to the flyleaf, David Kahn (who wrote "The
Codebreakers") said of this book that "Steven Levy has written
cryptography's 'The Soul of a New Machine'". There may be some
truth to that, but mostly it implies a level of prose that is not
in evidence in this book. Steven Levy is no Tracy Kidder, aside
from an occasional tendency to let his prose override his
writing. What Levy is, however, is a pretty good technology
journalist, and the book is at its best when it trades on that
background. Indeed, Levy used a great deal of research in this
book which doesn't appear to have been used for his earlier
magazine articles. While the book is not footnoted, there is an
extensive "notes" section at the end. There is also a
bibiliography, and an index. One thing that Levy fails to do is make his "characters" come
across as fascinating individuals. This is not for lack of
trying -- clearly he finds them fascinating himself. However,
his prose fails him, particularly when trying to raise what a
journalist would call "human interest." The strength of the book is not in its revelations of fact
either. The events described are already well-known to anybody
with an interest in the subject (in a number of cases,
particularly for events over the last decade, this is due to
Levy's own journalism in "Wired" and elsewhere). Aside from
filling in the history for those previously unaware of it, Levy's
interviewing skills turn up new evidence of the answers to one of
the most frequently repeated questions in the history of open
cryptography: "what were they thinking?" For me, that is both the most important and the most interesting
question that Levy needed to face, and he takes it head-on. In
particular, he adds considerable scope (although little depth) to
describing the history of the Clipper chip. What were the NSA
(and the politicians) thinking? Well, as Levy describes it, the
key was the conflict between the FBI and the NSA, and the
illogical government approach was largely driven by the resulting
schizophrenia. Conspiracy nuts won't like that conclusion, but
it makes more sense than believing that the government really
expected it could put the crypto genie back into its bottle. For those who don't appreciate the importance of crypto in the
Internet-connected age, this book is the best education in that
area. There is room for a better one to replace it, but it doesn't exist now, and likely won't be written.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Journalism, Mediocre Literature
Review: According to the flyleaf, David Kahn (who wrote "The
Codebreakers") said of this book that "Steven Levy has written
cryptography's 'The Soul of a New Machine'". There may be some
truth to that, but mostly it implies a level of prose that is not
in evidence in this book. Steven Levy is no Tracy Kidder, aside
from an occasional tendency to let his prose override his
writing. What Levy is, however, is a pretty good technology
journalist, and the book is at its best when it trades on that
background. Indeed, Levy used a great deal of research in this
book which doesn't appear to have been used for his earlier
magazine articles. While the book is not footnoted, there is an
extensive "notes" section at the end. There is also a
bibiliography, and an index. One thing that Levy fails to do is make his "characters" come
across as fascinating individuals. This is not for lack of
trying -- clearly he finds them fascinating himself. However,
his prose fails him, particularly when trying to raise what a
journalist would call "human interest." The strength of the book is not in its revelations of fact
either. The events described are already well-known to anybody
with an interest in the subject (in a number of cases,
particularly for events over the last decade, this is due to
Levy's own journalism in "Wired" and elsewhere). Aside from
filling in the history for those previously unaware of it, Levy's
interviewing skills turn up new evidence of the answers to one of
the most frequently repeated questions in the history of open
cryptography: "what were they thinking?" For me, that is both the most important and the most interesting
question that Levy needed to face, and he takes it head-on. In
particular, he adds considerable scope (although little depth) to
describing the history of the Clipper chip. What were the NSA
(and the politicians) thinking? Well, as Levy describes it, the
key was the conflict between the FBI and the NSA, and the
illogical government approach was largely driven by the resulting
schizophrenia. Conspiracy nuts won't like that conclusion, but
it makes more sense than believing that the government really
expected it could put the crypto genie back into its bottle. For those who don't appreciate the importance of crypto in the
Internet-connected age, this book is the best education in that
area. There is room for a better one to replace it, but it doesn't exist now, and likely won't be written.
Rating:
Summary: WOW
Review: An amazing exposition of the development of Crypto for the masses. Beautifully written so that the reader only needs a very small amount of technical understanding to read the book.
Rating:
Summary: A Telling History of Cryptography
Review: Cryptography has become one of the most important technologies in a secure digital world. It makes possible digital signatures, protection of confidential information, protection against tampering--or at least provides notification that tampering has occurred--and secure authentication of users. In an age when the simplest security breeches of highly visible dot-coms makes the front page of the popular press, cryptography and related technologies are making their ways into almost all of the software products we use daily. But it's easy to forget that only recently did cryptography become available for non-government users. Reaching this point was a long and hard battle with what used to be the most secret of government organizations, the National Security Agency (NSA). Bit by bit, researchers outside the agency made fundamental discoveries that eroded NSA's ability to control cryptography. Until finally the government was forced to come to terms with the digital age where the secrets could make their way around the globe in seconds. This is the story that Steven Levy tells. Although the book tends to portray researchers outside the NSA as skillful and lucky heroes, and those inside the NSA as pompous but brilliant ideologues, it's a compelling story. The book is roughly chronological, starting with Whit Diffie's independent discovery of public key cryptography, one of the major breakthroughs that made the field feasible, the story of RSA, the ill-fated Clipper chip, and concessions the NSA was forced into against overwhelming pressure. The author outlines the development of a people's cryptography and its collision with the U.S. government. The book is about privacy in the information age and about the people who saw many years ago that the Internet's greatest virtue was its greatest drawback: free access to information that leads to a loss of privacy. From a developer's standpoint, the story is interesting because it explains many of the features of cryptography as we know it today, making it easier to put them to efficient use. For example, what was the big deal with keys longer than 40-bits that the government restricted them from export? And just how much safer are 128-bit keys? Sure, we all have heard the number of hours or millennia today's computers take to break such keys, but why those specific numbers? As with most complex controversies, both the government and the outsiders make compelling arguments for their case. Cryptography has long been the province of governments, and wars have been won and lost on the success of keeping secrets secret. But in a demographic society, individual privacy is almost sacrosanct, even though it is not explicitly guaranteed in any of the documents on which the U.S. is founded. Crypto tells the story of how these conflicting interests have been sorted out to the current state of affairs.
Rating:
Summary: New to Cryptology
Review: I am at the very beginning of learning cryptology so I don't know much about the validity of this writing. However, when I pick up a book, can't put it down for very long, and read it all the way through, then to me it is a very good book. It was interesting, humorous at some points, and (I believe) informative. Freedom is what my brothers died for. I will know if it is truthful or not after I have done more research. Which I would like to say to the reviewer from S.F. that did not like the book, if you know so much why don't you write a book about it?
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Good Presentation :-)
Review: I enjoyed reading this book; Mr. Levy has an engaging and readable style. One can always wish for more, but in my case, I would have liked a chapter about crypto activities in other countries besides the U.S. and Great Britain. For example, what do we know, if anything about what the Soviet Union or, say, Israel was doing in this field over the years. As example, do we have evidence that U.S. developments were actually put to use by other countries. Otherwise, for me, now on to read "Hackers"!
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good Presentation :-)
Review: I enjoyed reading this book; Mr. Levy has an engaging and readable style. One can always wish for more, but in my case, I would have liked a chapter about crypto activities in other countries besides the U.S. and Great Britain. For example, what do we know, if anything about what the Soviet Union or, say, Israel was doing in this field over the years. As example, do we have evidence that U.S. developments were actually put to use by other countries. Otherwise, for me, now on to read "Hackers"!
Rating:
Summary: Facinating history of cryptography
Review: I enjoyed this book. This book will give you a good general history of cryptography in the US. (It does not focus on the US solely, just most of the story takes place in the US.) Steven Levy describes, succinctly and in layman's terms what cryptography is, where we started and how we got to where we are today. This is not a book of equations and diagrams. Seek out other manuals for those details. While the subject of crytpography may sound like a cure for insomnia, Mr Levy's book is practically a page turner.
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