Rating: 
Summary: Save your money, if you bought the first edition.
Review: The original version of Codebreakers is a wonderful, detailed
history of cryptography and spies. This new edition is the
same book with 16 additional pages pretending to update the
history of the last 30 years. The great photographs of the
first edition have been considerably degraded in quality
to boot. I guess that it meets the standard of a new edition
but the list priceof $65 for a bare outline of 30 years is
unreasonable. I think it is a fraud to add 16 pages to a book
that is almost 1200 pages and call it revised and updated.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written book.
Review: The prose is terrible. The author has trouble composing sentences, and organizing them into paragraphs. The 'end-notes' are not carefully constructed. Often, it is difficult to ascertain from what source particular information came from.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb, but not perfect
Review: This book is not intended to teach the reader how to design or cryptanalyze codes and ciphers; it is a history book, and a really great one. However, the reader should be aware of a couple of things that may not be apparent.First, the 1996 "revised edition" differs from the 1967 first edition only in the addition of a final chapter to cover what Kahn didn't know (or didn't choose to include) in the 1967 edition. The first 26 of 27 chapters, and the references and bibliography associated with them, are essentially identical to those of the 1967 edition. This means that a number of statements and passages in the first 26 chapters, although correct in 1967, are misleading if one assumes they were written in 1996. I recommend that the reader skim Chapter 27 quickly before reading the rest of the book, so as not to misunderstand any of what's in earlier chapters. Second, keep in mind that in 1967 Kahn was essentially an outsider so far as the intelligence community was concerned, but by 1996 he was definitely regarded as an insider. Hence, the new final chapter is written with complete respect for the sensitivities of the intelligence community, which the original book was not. I was surprised to see one particular statement in the last chapter until I realized that NSA wants to correct a misapprehension widely held outside the community. Much more important, Kahn now knows a great deal that he has chosen to omit from the last chapter, including much that's unclassified but still regarded by somebody as sensitive for one reason or another. He even omits certain material that he made publicly available some years ago in his written testimony to a Congressional subcommittee. So the reader should understand that this book says less than it might about various aspects of the history of cryptology and its impact dating back as far as World War II. Whether this is good or bad depends on where one sits; if one is concerned about the sensitivities of various governments, it's good; if one wants to know as much as one can about the history of cryptology since 1940 that's not still clasified, it's bad.
Rating:
Summary: I have readed other books on codes & ciphers.
Review: This book is the best i have readed. Of all the other books i have readed, David Khan's book Go's in details about codes & cipher.
Rating: 
Summary: great content, so so writing style
Review: This book is the meat and potatos of this subject. I know of no other book which attempts or even reaches for the scope of this one. The content is quite fascinating, but I find the writing style to be slightly distastefull. If this book were written today, the writer would be roasted for his lack of racial sensitivity in the first chapter. As an American living in Japan, I was repulsed by the tone with which the author treated Japan as a nation and as a people. Since that seemed to be the standard in 1967, perhaps I cannot fault him, yet by my standards, I found the tone revolting. Was this material not revised in the second edition to preserve the style of the original edition or just to display the author's prejudice? Other than this, the author's stories and anecdotes often help the reader navigate what might otherwise be very dry material.
Rating:
Summary: Essential History of Cryptography to circa 1950
Review: This is the essential history of cryptography at least through WW II. But of course, at the time it was published none of the ULTRA and Enigma decrypts had been released. And since the original hard book edition had become a rare book... it needed to be reprinted: the paperback had been excised of much of the material in the notes. All that said, when I first heard that this second edition was to come out, I eagerly sought it out. But I returned it the next day. The only new material is a short superficial chapter added at the end. None of the former text has been changed and the new material is simply not worth it since I have the first hardback. If you want more on ULTRA and the others there are a number of excellent books on both cryptography and SIGINT operations published since. And after all crytography is just a game unless the results can be applied in real time to affect events.
Rating:
Summary: Still THE reference book (although not updated enough)
Review: This is the view of a french reader. I bought the french translation in 1980 and was enthralled. Now that I've seen the original one, I realized that many things were left over in the translation (incl. many pictures) and this edition, although it should have been more updated, is a real, renewed pleasure to read. Great book
Rating:
Summary: Definitive history of cryptology (through mid 1960's)
Review: This massive volume is the final word on the history of classical (non-computer) ciphers, codes, and secret writing.
The book is carefully researched: 153 of its 1164 pages
are endnotes. But Kahn's writing is very readable, and includes
many human interest stories in addition to historical and technical
treatments of his topics.
Crypto buffs have never been able to understand why this
1967 book keeps going out of print.
(Don't let the 1983 reprint date fool you; the book leaves off in the
mid-60's. Also, don't be confused by the paperback version,
which is much shorter than the hardcover version.)
Rating:
Summary: Must be the bible of cryptography
Review: Weighty and thorough.
Between this , Simon Singh and Helen Fouche Gaines, one has reason to assume that an extensive introduction to this field of knowledge has been gained.
Rating: 
Summary: Kahn drowns the reader into useless historical data
Review: You should DEFINITELY READ Kahn's book IF you want to know who the leading cryptographers and cryptanalysts in history were, where and when they were born, how many siblings they had, what their yearly salary was, what impact they had on history, how long they lived, what they died of etc. (I know there are many people out there who LOVE to read about such things.) As for myself, I have no idea how much a French livre was worth in 1570, and even if I did, I couldn't care less whether a cryptanalyst's annuity then was 100 or 10000 livres. I am sorry that all these great people died, but I think whether it was because of lung cancer or pneumonia is of little relevance. High school history was bad enough, I do not need any more useless historical data, thank you very much. What I expected from the book was that it would tell me a lot about the development of the METHODS of cryptography and cryptanalysis, describing what people tried, what worked, what didn't and why. (Including not only the algorithmic but also organizational and management issues such as key management.) If you have a similar interest, FORGET ABOUT Kahn's book. Kahn gives a decent description of the encrypting/coding methods, but this is so scattered among the irrelevant pieces of information that it is hardly worth the "mining" effort. There is HARDLY ANYTHING about the methods used to breaking the codes. Mr. Kahn made an honest effort in researching the field (except for the chapter about the modern developments - DES and the like - that is just glued to the end of the book to make it sell better). Still, he shouldn't have poured everything he ever read into his book. Less would have been more. The Codebreakers is reputed to be the best book on the history of cryptography. Apart from the content, I found the style only so-so. I wonder how poorly written the other books are...
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