“Codebreaking: A Practical Guide is quite the best book on codebreaking I have read: clear, engaging, and fun. A must for would-be recruits to GCHQ and the NSA!”
—Sir Dermot Turing, author of Prof, the biography of his uncle, Alan Turing
“Riveting. Dunin and Schmeh show us that we each have our own inner code-breaker yearning to be set free. Codebreaking isn’t just for super-geniuses with supercomputers; it’s something we were all born to do.”
—Mike Godwin, creator of Godwin’s law and former general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation
“This is THE book about codebreaking. Very concise, very inclusive, and easy to read. Good references for those who would make codes, too, like Kryptos.”
—Ed Scheidt, CIA
“A compendium of historical cryptography. Approachable, accessible, this book brings back the joy I felt when I first read about these things as a kid.”
—Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP encryption and inductee into the Internet Hall of Fame
“One of the most helpful guides outside the NSA to cracking ciphers. But even if you don’t become a codebreaker, this book is full of fascinating crypto lore.”
—Steven Levy, New York Times best-selling author of Crypto, Hackers, and Facebook: The Inside Story
“Another kind of Applied Cryptography.”
—Whitfield Diffie, Turing Laureate and creator of public-key cryptography
“This is the book of my dreams. Super-clear, super-fun guide for solving secret messages of all kinds.”
—Jason Fagone, author of the best-selling book The Woman Who Smashed Codes
“Kool dnoces a htrow era snootrac eht fo ynam.”
—Suomynona Ecila
“A wonderful mix of ciphers, both famous and little-known, solved and unsolved. Beginners will be hooked on exploring the world of secrets in cipher, and those who have already been introduced to the field will find much that is new.”
—Craig Bauer, editor in chief of Cryptologia and author of Unsolved!: The History and Mystery of the World’s Greatest Ciphers
“Cryptography? Ciphers? I thought this would be an easy book to put down. I was very wrong.”
—Steve Meretzky, co-author with Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy computer game
"Fun, fascinating, and user friendly . . . Expertly written, organized and presented, [Codebreaking] is unreservedly recommended as a supplemental Code Breaking curriculum textbook."
—Midwest Book Review