Rating: 
Summary: Very good, but incomplete
Review: This book is an entertaining account of many of the people and episodes involved in making cryptography and cryptanalysis a respectable and important topic of work for scientists and engineers not affiliated with any government agency. The incidents recounted that I happen to know about personally are well and accurately described here. But there are a couple of gaps.First, some of the key players "on the outside" are not mentioned; this may well be because most of those who aren't mentioned by now are "insiders." But this results in some of this book being a bit misleading. For example, serious work on cryptanalysis by outsiders, including one piece of work that Admiral Inman, when head of NSA, described as "the most brilliant piece of civilian cryptanalysis since World War II", was already going on by the late 1970s; this had serious national security implications, and helps to explain why NSA was so ambivalent about "outsiders" engaging in *any* crypto research. Overall, although NSA goofed badly several times, I think they managed to keep a more balanced view on the issue than I might have expected. The fact that Levy doesn't mention some of the key "outsider" work suggests to me that he may not have talked with (or at least didn't gain the confidence of) such people as Cipher Deavours and David Kahn, who could have given him perspective on the "outsider" work that he doesn't discuss. Secondly, I infer that he was unable to get any of the NSA side of the story from NSA itself. This is a pity. It's presumably not Levy's fault; NSA only talks to people it decides to talk to, and then says only what it decides needs to be said. I assume that Levy tried to get information from NSA and failed; I don't know. But if NSA stonewalled Levy, it's because he didn't make the right contacts to get in touch with somebody who would have been willing to talk with him about NSA's viewpoint on various issues Levy discusses that are not sensitive in NSA's view. That extra information would have helped make Levy's book clearer and more complete. In spite of this, Levy is quite fair to NSA, which speaks well of his thoughtfulness and balance. So, overall I regard this as a good book, well worth reading, provided one keeps in mind that it's not the complete story.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor substitute for The Code Book
Review: This book is poorly written. Neither does it explain the true mathematics nor does it give a good history of the development of cryptoanalysis. Anyone interested in the history and development should read The Code Book by Simon Singh which is well written and the subject comprehensively reviewed. I give Simon Singh's book 5 stars!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent short history on the human side of pub. key crypto
Review: This easy-to-ready short history by writer Steven Levy, who has written numerous articles for Wired, is a very well-researched volume on the human side of public-key cryptography. Levy has interviewed all of the major players: Diffie, Adleman, Chaum, Zimmerman, and others; he's done nearly a decade of research on the subject, and monitored the sci.crypt.* newsgroups. Clearly, this is an authoritative account of the short 30-year history of public key. The main theme of the book is how the NSA tried to stifle new developments by the researchers, placing secrecy orders and classifying their patents and papers. Throughout the book, as Levy draws out the characters, it's the crypto community vs. the government, until ultimately the cypherpunks win out. This book doesn't contain a single diagram; no photos, and no equations at all. So if you're looking for a technical introduction to crypto, look elsewhere; this is purely an informally-written account on the people behind the scenes. Five stars, for what it is; sure, Levy writes with magazine-style prose, but this fits the high-level view he takes on the subject. Most importantly, this volume was exhaustively researched and has the collaboration of all of the key players, which lends Levy's account great credibility.
Rating:
Summary: Crypto for the People
Review: This is a book about people, very bright idealistic and forward looking people based principally in the beginning at MIT and Stanford. It tells how their ideas and struggles with NSA over a period of several decades unleashed the genie of strong encryption from government shackles. The pages are based on a distillation of extensive personal interviews by the author of the prime movers in the new cryptography conducted over a period of several years. The account is chronological and gives a real sense of the actors as people including their doubts, fears, exhalted moments, business failures, victories. It deftly intertwines explanations of the underlying principles of cryptography as the concepts arise in the flow of the work. Reading the book you feel like you are in the meeting, or the place or the dilemma as the tale unfolds. The author always strives for balance and you hear both sides of the debates, disagreements, and controversies that arise. This is a very timely book, well-written, nicely paced, and readable without any special technical background. You can really get a sense of the main characters as they lead their daily lives as well as the importance of their work to society and the evolution of web commerce. The author clearly had the trust and support of the players. Highly Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Description of the Genesis of Public Key Crypto
Review: While the more computer savy reader might balk at this book, it is an outstanding resource for those unfamiliar with the history of Public Key Crypto. Levy does a fantastic job of explaining difficult concepts in easy to understand language. His history of how Public Key Crypto came to be will no doubt be a standard text in years to come. A fascinating story of how a few motivated "geeks and freaks" changed the way we compute and transformed the internet into a viable platform for commerce. A worthwhile, if at times poorly written book, it is deserving of both your time and your money.
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