- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st Edition edition (23 Mar 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0300098464
- ISBN-13: 978-0300098464
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 17 x 3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,018,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Yardley was both a patriot and a self-serving entrepreneur, and his life raises moral questions as much as it illustrates the history of cryptography. Kahn's biography of Yardley is fascinating reading." Harvey Klehr, coauthor of The Secret World of American Communism and The Soviet World of American Communism."
Product Description
One of the most colourful and controversial figures in American intelligence, Herbert O. Yardley (1889-1958) gave America its best form of information, but his fame rests more on his indiscretions than on his achievements. In this highly readable biography, a premier historian of military intelligence tells Yardley's story and evaluates his impact on the American intelligence community. Yardley established the nation's first codebreaking agency in 1917, and his solutions helped the United States win a major diplomatic victory at the 1921 disarmament conference. But when his unit was closed in 1929 because "gentlemen do not read each other's mail", Yardley wrote a best-selling memoir that introduced - and disclosed - codemaking and codebreaking to the public. David Kahn describes the vicissitudes of Yardley's career, including his work in China and Canada, offers a capsule history of American intelligence up to World War I, and gives a short course in classical codes and ciphers. He debunks the accusations that the publication of Yardley's book caused Japan to change its codes and ciphers and that Yardley traitorously sold his solutions to Japan.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
In 1890, the center of population of the United States moved into Indiana. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
In 1890, the center of population of the United States moved into Indiana. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A Forgotten Intelligence Innovator
15 April 2004
Format:Hardcover
Despite its current reputation, there were times when American intelligence (meaning spying) was an unalloyed success. For many, the most interesting part of the spy business is signals intelligence, tuning into or breaking into foreign messages and decoding them. There has been signals intelligence of some sort ever since there has been international conflict, but the field took off when messages could be transmitted wirelessly. Anyone could pick up the signal, so the trick was to encode it; the counter-trick was to crack the code. Cryptographers and other spies already know and respect the name of Herbert O. Yardley. He isn't well known by others, but almost fifty years after his death, he has gotten a full, instructive biography, _The Reader of Gentleman's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking_ (Yale University Press) by David Kahn. Kahn is the perfect teller of this tale, having written both articles for scholarly journals as well as popular books about intelligence matters. There is not a great deal of detail about the procedures of decryption, which are described only generally, but there is a unique American life here. According to Kahn, Yardley better than anyone foresaw how important cracking signals could be to American intelligence. He created the first permanent agency to intercept messages and break them. He was "the most colorful and controversial figure in American intelligence," and his controversial actions are fully included here.
Yardley came to Washington DC in 1914, working as a telegrapher in the State Department. He was fascinated by the messages that came in and out, and determined that he would give his life to cryptography. His efforts within the Army Signal Corp were effective, but more important even than the wartime accomplishments was that Yardley convinced the Army and State Department to continue signal intelligence after Armistice Day. He believed that the stream of international communications could indicate the attitudes and plans of nations who were our friends as well as our foes. He was right; his work ensured that America knew what the aims of the Japanese were at the arms limitation talks in 1921, saving the government millions of dollars and buying some years of peace. Those who thought that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail" eventually closed his bureau down. Yardley was, at different times in his life, to make up cryptogram puzzles for magazines, to go into the invisible ink business, to write novels, to write screenplays for Hollywood, to run a restaurant, and to attempt commercial orange-juice distillation, as well as to become decoder-for-hire for Canada and China. He made a hit with his first book in 1931, The American Black Chamber, which caused immediate furor, about his government decryptions. He showed what his bureau had done, and the reading public was very much interested. He was accused of treason, but Kahn shows that Yardley was merely trying to make big money, at which he never was very successful. It was his main character flaw: "Yardley was a rotter, not a traitor."
One year before his death, Yardley published _The Education of a Poker Player_, full of anecdotes about poker games in which he had played as well as practical advice about how to win. It is regarded as a classic, and is still in print and is admired by serious gamblers and penny ante basement players. It was a good way for Yardley to bow off the world's stage, but is not his lasting monument. When it came time to start busting codes again as World War II loomed, no one had to be convinced that cryptanalysts were good sources of power. Yardley, the first American governmental cryptographer, had done his part to make America stronger through signal intelligence. He was an important and flawed figure who deserves more recognition; he has, surprisingly, had no biography written before, and Kahn's detailed and readable book will always be the definitive one on the subject.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
A loud figure in a quiet business
9 Aug 2004
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A biography of Herbert Yardley is welcome. David Kahn has done a remarkable job unearthing many aspects of the life of an obscure figure in American history. Kahn is a fine, readable writer, in this book no less than in prior ones. I very much enjoyed his Seizing the Enigma (1991).
My lack of enthusiasm for this book centers on Yardley (not the author). During the 1920s, Yardley enjoyed a comfy salary heading a U.S. government cipher office in New York, where he might laze for an hour a day. In contrast, William F. Friedman, working for the Army, wrote about cryptanalysis, studied statistics, and evaluated the usefulness of tabulating machines, forerunners of computers. When the Hoover Administration reduced funding to his office, Yardley wrote a book, melodramatically called the American Black Chamber, which revealed the world of coded communications and U.S. efforts to read foreign communications. In so doing, he sold government secrets entrusted to him. Thereafter, he went Hollywood, contributing to screen plays. During 1938-39, he was employed by China to work on Japanese communications; his service was uninspired. Because Yardley had proven to be indiscreet, the U.S. of course did not make use of him during World War II, during which code-breaking was an important element in Anglo-American success. In 1957, Yardley published his second best-selling book, this one on poker. Not many authors write one popular book, let alone two, so Yardley seems to have been a talented person, in some respects.
Kahn seems to speculate that Friedman envied Yardley's success with women. No evidence that this would be a basis for Friedman's dislike of Yardley is provided. To a genuinely loyal patriot like Friedman, why would he be jealous of the likes of Yardley? In any event, Friedman and many others within the British and U.S. intelligence agencies rendered extraordinary, educated, hardworking service in the years leading up to and beyond the Second World War. Friedman would be the much more important figure for history, even if not a flashy author or self-centered cad.
Kahn refers to Yardley's "immortal legacy" of introducing codebreaking in the U.S. I am unpersuaded. Codebreaking would have come to the U.S. regardless of participation by Yardley. By his writings, Yardley may be appreciated, I suppose, for contributing to pop culture. This book persuades me that Yardley's service on behalf of his nation was trivial and self-serving. Yet I am glad to have read this book. It is well-written, well-researched, and pleasantly concise.
My lack of enthusiasm for this book centers on Yardley (not the author). During the 1920s, Yardley enjoyed a comfy salary heading a U.S. government cipher office in New York, where he might laze for an hour a day. In contrast, William F. Friedman, working for the Army, wrote about cryptanalysis, studied statistics, and evaluated the usefulness of tabulating machines, forerunners of computers. When the Hoover Administration reduced funding to his office, Yardley wrote a book, melodramatically called the American Black Chamber, which revealed the world of coded communications and U.S. efforts to read foreign communications. In so doing, he sold government secrets entrusted to him. Thereafter, he went Hollywood, contributing to screen plays. During 1938-39, he was employed by China to work on Japanese communications; his service was uninspired. Because Yardley had proven to be indiscreet, the U.S. of course did not make use of him during World War II, during which code-breaking was an important element in Anglo-American success. In 1957, Yardley published his second best-selling book, this one on poker. Not many authors write one popular book, let alone two, so Yardley seems to have been a talented person, in some respects.
Kahn seems to speculate that Friedman envied Yardley's success with women. No evidence that this would be a basis for Friedman's dislike of Yardley is provided. To a genuinely loyal patriot like Friedman, why would he be jealous of the likes of Yardley? In any event, Friedman and many others within the British and U.S. intelligence agencies rendered extraordinary, educated, hardworking service in the years leading up to and beyond the Second World War. Friedman would be the much more important figure for history, even if not a flashy author or self-centered cad.
Kahn refers to Yardley's "immortal legacy" of introducing codebreaking in the U.S. I am unpersuaded. Codebreaking would have come to the U.S. regardless of participation by Yardley. By his writings, Yardley may be appreciated, I suppose, for contributing to pop culture. This book persuades me that Yardley's service on behalf of his nation was trivial and self-serving. Yet I am glad to have read this book. It is well-written, well-researched, and pleasantly concise.
Required reading for IC historians and professionals
22 Mar 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Few people understand the roots of US intelligence and crytology as well as Dr. David Kahn. His biography of Herbert O. Yardley is a tribute to an energetic pioneer of modern intelligence, an intelligence hero of the Great War and a struggling Depression-era author and reluctant contractor. It's time that the Intelligence Community extend its corporate memory beyond Wild Bill Donovan and embrace Herbert O. Yardley, whose energy and foresight paved the way for NSA in particular, and for The Community in general. His personal and professional stories should be heard and digested by his successors, who, it is presumed, would weed out a workaholic Average Joe of Yardley's earthly vices with a quick Life Style Poly. No one knows Yardley like Kahn, and every American should get to know Herbert Yardley...
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > United States > Military
- Books > Biography > War & Espionage > World War I
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Biographies & Histories > Biographies & Memoirs
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Management
- Books > History > Military History > Strategy, Tactics & Military Science
- Books > History > Military History > World War I
- Books > History > North America
- Books > History > World History > World War I 1914-1918
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Warfare & Defence
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
