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: 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: Gripping
Review: I loved "Hackers" by Levy, so I decided to read this. Fortunately, Levy kept his writing style for this book. Mixing public history, interviews, government history, and personal comments, this book is an excellent history of cryptography for the people. It was fascinating reading the pressures coming from the government that the early inventors had to deal with. It was also amazing the amount of people involved with public key cryptography. From NSA directors, to professors, to even the vice president, it is quite astounding how many people influenced the direction of public key. The only problem I did have reading this was not necessarily anything with the book, but more of the timing of my reading. Throughout the book it is somewhat stressed that the government sheltered cryptography for national security. National security, which at the time of the writing, did not appear to be needed. But after September 11th, the concept of a terrorist using public key to hide his devious ideas does not seem ridiculous after all. While in the long run it was beneficial for cryptography to be public, it makes you wonder if events would have turned out differently if cryptography would have been kept secret. The most surprisingly part of the book is the end. I will not ruin it here, but the epilogue was the perfect conclusion to this book.
Rating:
Summary: History of modern cryptography
Review: I've read Simon Singh's book on the history of cryptography, and had some doubts whether this book would add much, but having enjoyed Levy's "Hackers", I bought this book as well. This book focuses on the second half of the 20th century, and on the subjects of privacy in the digital era, and thus has little in common with Singh's book. The book covers a lot of ground in a relatively short text (about 300 pages) in a clear and fascinating way, and I've enjoyed the book and finished it in a couple of days. Other reviewers noted that the book contains little technical information. I think it makes for better focus on the larger issues of privacy, security, e-commerce, etc. For the gory details, one can read books such as Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography. My only problem with the book is that it is somewhat biased against the U.S. government's position.
Rating: 
Summary: Drab and Uninteresting
Review: It is more of a history of the characters than the history of RSA or cryptography. I would recommend Simon Singh's The Code Book for anyone wanting to learn about the history of cryptography. In just one chapter of the Code Book, Simon Singh puts in more unbiased and detailed information in an infinitely more interesting and readable manner than Levy crams in this whole book of uninteresting chapters.
Rating:
Summary: Plaintext review :)
Review: It was a great to learn about the origins of crypto and the different people which brought about this revolution to protect privacy of everyone.At times i admit i had to read a paragraph twice as it became confusing sometimes but all in all a great book and a must read for anyone interested in crypto.
Rating:
Summary: Great coverage of modern cryptography.
Review: Light-hearted by nature, Steven Levy gives everything the proper treatment in an often amusing way without being irreverent, becoming properly serious where warranted.
This book is well researched and presents a balanced perspective from both sides: privacy advocates who do not necessarily trust the government, and government authorities terrified of losing their precious wiretaps and other snooping capabilities. The appalling actions of a few self-righteous, overzealous mavericks on both sides are recounted.
Examples of successful U.S. government eavesdropping are mentioned; for instance, it was monitoring that revealed that the Libyans were the bombers of Pan Am flight 103. There is example after example of how the antiquated, rigid NSA position that "crypto is munitions" stifled the ascendant American software industry in the 1990's by restricting exports, giving foreign competitors quite an edge while the rest of the world already had strong crypto anyway! Asinine inconsistencies in the old export restrictions are cited. The players of the NSA, NIST, and Congress are named and events, from assembly bills to telling conversations, are recounted. I think most crypto enthusiasts will find this recap informative. It certainly filled in a lot of gaps for me!
The book does not pretend to be a primer on cryptography. Levy does his usual admirable job of reaching out to the masses with lay explanations and clever analogies, but this being specialized math, it will at times go over the heads of some readers. Levy has a good sense of how far to take a technical explanation before dropping it; he doesn't go around the bend. Historical cryptographic systems recounted in David Kahn's tome "The Codebreakers" are now passé, not just because computers do it faster, but also due to relatively recent mathematical discoveries. The chronology of those discoveries is told along with the human stories behind them --of those who yearned to understand the art of secret writing and came to realize that it boils down to hard adversarial mathematics.
The human story throughout is one of unassuming, unlikely geniuses whose discoveries got no immediate fanfare, rather taking decades to catch on. Today (ironically now that the patents have expired) those discoveries are in use every day by most people using the Internet, a cellular phone, or any other wireless device.
The book is at times dull. To me, the accounts of legislative machinations were slow-going but I don't see how they could be made more interesting.
Jim Bidzos is finally vindicated as a real hero of the crypto revolution (after being portrayed in a bad light in a book on PGP). Diffie/Hellman/Merkle, the Cypherpunks, anonymous remailers, Julf Helsingius and Penet, David Chaum and digital cash protocols, court decisions, the Clipper chip --it's all here.
Did government spooks discover public key crypto first, in secret? The book ends with the interesting and hitherto unknown story of James H. Ellis of the General Communications HQ, the British cousin of the NSA.
An index, a small glossary, and an appendix of references are included. Well done!
Rating:
Summary: A major contribution about to the History of crypto
Review: This book is a contribution to the History of crypto and computing, assuming that this history changes very much our everyday life even if we are not into computer field.
It focuses on the story of the people who opened the crypto Pandora's box, allowing todays e-business long before the word was even invented. It starts with Whit Diffie (Diffie-Hellman) in the late 60's, through Rivest, Shamir and Adleman (RSA) and ends with Zimmerman (Pgp) and Helsingius (remailer). It also follows other conributors to crypto and business people (eg. : from RSA, Lotus) as well as some politicians and people involved at the NSA.
The author describes the oppositions between the pro-crypto-for-everyone and the US government, the government self-contradictions and oppositions with the tech firms. This includes facts about the NSA, the Clipper Chip issue, the patents problems, etc. These are always seen from the viewpoint of the various people involved at that time.
It is easy to read and does not need any technical or maths background. If focuses on the people. It does not discuss the subject : it tells us the story.
If you are looking for a book about crypto in order to understand "how it works", forget this book. If you want to understand how people with one obsession can change the world, just read it.
The author manages suspens very well, from the beginning to the end. This book is hard to close : you really want to get to the next page.
So why not 5 stars ? Because I think this book could have been perfect with just a few diagrams showing the crypto algorithm (eg. : differences between Diffie-Hellman and RSA are not clear). Ok... ok... I give 5 stars only to books which change my life. This one is exciting, informative and well written, but not to that point.
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.
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