Review by Booklist Review
This well-written history of cryptography begins with a pottery-glaze formula encrypted in cuneiform on a clay tablet (1500 BCE) and traces the uses of secret messages in statecraft, espionage, warfare, crime, literature, and business up to the present. Along the way, Blackwood, whose historical novels include Second Sight (2005) and The Shakespeare Stealer (2007), discusses the historical development of coding and encryption and tells many good stories of messages ciphered and deciphered, particularly in English and American history. For readers motivated to understand the codes and ciphers mentioned in the text, he stops to explain their principles and how to use them. The many sidebars and illustrations, including photos, reproductions of artworks and artifacts, and the pictures demonstrating the codes themselves, contribute to the book's approachable look. Source notes for quotes, a bibliography, a glossary, and lists of recommended fiction, nonfiction, and Internet sites are appended. A solid introduction to a topic of perennial interest.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Many books present readers with codes to crack and puzzles to solve, but this excellent narrative history of cryptography explains who developed the different systems of encryption and why-and who managed to crack the codes. Blackwood offers an accessible and often funny lesson in alternative history that features many names that readers will know (Julius Caesar, Queen Elizabeth I, and Thomas Jefferson, to name a few), as well as those who worked behind the scenes to create what they hoped were unbreakable ciphers. Wherever matters of national security were at stake, cryptography played a major role, and perhaps the most interesting lesson is that many landmark events would have turned out differently had it not been for cryptographers working on both sides to create and break the other side's secret messages. Blackwood provides challenging examples of each type of cipher for readers to try. The book's clever and appealing format, designed to look like a secret notebook of torn pages, photographs, and sketches taped to the pages, complements the subject perfectly. This is an excellent accompaniment to fiction series like Nancy Springer's "Enola Holmes" books (Philomel), which make use of many of the codes and ciphers Blackwood mentions.-Rebecca Donnelly, Loma Colorado Public Library, Rio Rancho, NM (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Writing with the same animation that infuses his other accounts of historical enigmas and events (Perplexing People, 2006, etc.), Blackwood plunges into the history of codes and ciphers, cryptograms, nomenclators and steganography. In chapters with headers like "Babington, Beer, and Baconian Biliteralism," he traces many of the waysfrom simple to brain-bendingly complicatedthat messages have been concealed, from the earliest surviving example (a formula for pottery glaze coded in cuneiform and estimated to date from 1500 BCE) to today's "public key" cryptography. Along with plenty of photos or images of important code makers and breakers, he supplies (relatively) easy-to-use sidebar examples, charts and instructions for several systems. Readers with Something To Hide will come away from this engaging companion to the even more hands-on likes of Paul Janeczko's Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing (2004) with not only some new tools, but a great appreciation for the central role codes and ciphers have played in wars and diplomacy through the years. (Nonfiction. 11-16) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
