Facebook Twitter Pinterest <Embed>
  • RRP: £10.99
  • You Save: £3.30 (30%)
FREE Delivery in the UK on orders with at least £10 of books.
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
The Code Book: The Secret... has been added to your Basket
Dispatch to:
France - Mainland
To see addresses, please
Or
Please enter a valid UK postcode.
Or
+ £2.80 UK delivery
Used: Very Good | Details
Sold by awesome_books_001
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comment: This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See more of our deals.

Have one to sell?
Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See this image

The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking Paperback – 6 May 2002

by Simon Singh (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 215 customer reviews
See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Amazon Price
New from Used from
Kindle Edition
"Please retry"
£4.99
— —
Paperback
"Please retry"
£7.69
£4.56 £0.01
Want it delivered by Monday, 24 Oct.? Order within 12 hrs 55 mins and choose One-Day Delivery at checkout. Details
Note: This item is eligible for click and collect. Details
Pick up your parcel at a time and place that suits you.
  • Choose from over 13,000 locations across the UK
  • Prime members get unlimited deliveries at no additional cost
How to order to an Amazon Pickup Location?
  1. Find your preferred location and add it to your address book
  2. Dispatch to this address when you check out
Learn more
£7.69 FREE Delivery in the UK on orders with at least £10 of books. In stock. Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
click to open popover

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

  (What is this?)

Frequently Bought Together

  • The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking
  • +
  • Fermat's Last Theorem: The Story Of A Riddle That Confounded The World's Greatest Minds For 358 Years
  • +
  • The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets
Total price: £25.16
One of these items is dispatched sooner than the other. Show details
Buy the selected items together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.
Back
  1. Fermat's Last Theorem: The Story Of A Riddle That Confounded The World's Greatest Minds For 358 Years
    Simon Singh
    4.7 out of 5 stars 243
    Paperback
    £9.98 Amazon Prime
  2. Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
    Fred Piper
    4.4 out of 5 stars 25
    Paperback
    £4.99 Amazon Prime
  3. The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets
    Simon Singh
    4.4 out of 5 stars 166
    Paperback
    £7.49 Amazon Prime
  4. Cracking Codes and Cryptograms For Dummies
    Denise Sutherland
    4.8 out of 5 stars 6
    Paperback
    £7.99 Amazon Prime
  5. Fermat's Last Theorem
    Simon Singh
    4.7 out of 5 stars 243
    Hardcover
  6. The Puzzle Addict's Book of Codes: 250 Totally Addictive Cryptograms for You to Crack
    Philip Carter
    4.0 out of 5 stars 4
    Paperback
    £4.99 Amazon Prime
Next

Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.

Product details

  • Paperback: 402 pages
  • Publisher: Fourth Estate; New Ed edition (6 May 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1857028899
  • ISBN-13: 978-1857028898
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 2.7 x 19.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (215 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

  (What is this?)

Product Description

Amazon Review

With their inextricable links to history, mystery and war, codes and ciphers offer a rich seam of material for any author. The relative dearth of non-technical books on the subject may be a reflection of its technical foundations, which compel hard decisions about what to include and what to gloss over. Few are better qualified to take on the challenge than Simon Singh, the particle physicist turned science writer whose book Fermat's Last Theorem, recounting the dauntingly complex story behind the proof of this mathematical conjecture, deservedly became a No. 1 bestseller.

The Code Book contains many fascinating accounts of code-breaking in action, from its use in unmasking the Man in the Iron Mask and the defeat of the Nazis to the breaking of a modern cipher system by a world-wide army of amateurs in 1994. It is especially good on the most recent developments, such as quantum cryptology and the thorny civil liberties issues raised by the advent of very secure cipher systems over the Internet. But Singh's mathematical prowess sometimes gets the better of his journalistic instincts, leading to technical descriptions that unnecessarily disrupt the narrative flow. So buy it--and have a shot at the 10,000 pound mystery cipher--but be prepared to skip. --Robert Matthews

Review

‘A fascinating meander through the centuries; replete with tales of intrigue, political chicanery, military secrecy and academic rivalry.’
The Times

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsOne of the best pop-science books out there...
By D. Penn on 12 Jan. 2005
Format: Paperback
Others have already sung this book's praises, so I won't go into too much detail.
The Code Book gives the entire history of cryptology, starting with very basic substitution cypers, working all the way up to today's electronic systems. It is not, though, a reference book - it's very entertaining to read and doesn't solely focus on the science of the codes - Singh also relates stories behind codes.
Not only does he explain the codes, but also how they are broken. Singh is brilliant at making the complicated simple, and even manages to explain how the 'unbreakable' German Enigma was cracked in a way that will make you understand (at least while you are reading the book - if you try to explain it to someone else later you might get a bit muddled...)
This really is an incredible book - excellently written with a very interesting subject matter. Highly recommended.
Please vote for this review if you found it helpful. Thanks!
Comment 102 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsFascinating intro to the world of cryptography/crytpanalysis
By A Customer on 27 Aug. 2001
Format: Paperback
I approached this book with some trepidation. I have an interest in science but wasn't familiar with terms like cryptanalysis and the various other technical terms explained so well in this book. This is a subject which, if mis-handled, could make for an extremely boring book but Mr. Singh has the rare ability to make the most difficult subjects easy for the reader to comprehend and so this book is a fascinating journey into medieval treason trials, pre-historic lost cultures and modern day espionage - all the while educating us too.
Comment 23 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsTo make it or break it
By Mr P R Morgan on 12 Aug. 2004
Format: Paperback
This is the second book by Simon Singh, and he readily admits that he was surprised by the success of the first; 'Fermat's Last Theorem'. If you enjoyed that, then this will delight and entertain you, as well as lead you forward in an easy manner. There are some very complex ideas and processes encountered, yet each is tackled not as a whole, but as a series of small steps, explained in simple terms. It seems that the author subscribes to the notion that there is no such thing as a hard subject - the only hard part is the number of simple steps that are used, and the order they are combined, in order to reach the complex picture.
Singh states from the beginning that the book has two aims; to chart the evolution of codes, and to show that the study of codes and cryptology is as relevant for today as ever. Information always has had a high value, and there have been divers means employed throughout history to keep matters private where appropriate. The reasons for this secrecy are not always the same, but whether it is political, military, security or commercial, organisations and governments want to know that their information is safe, and at the same time strive to read similar matter from opponents. The history of codes and code breaking has been a struggle between the code makers, and the code breakers, with sometimes one and sometimes the other having the ascendancy. Sometimes intrigue and espionage have enabled a foothold to be gained to enable code breaking to continue.
The early use of codes and ciphers are explained well, and the author uses imaginative illustrations to convey his ideas. The chapters on modern developments, with private and public keys, for example, are brought to life with the example of mixing the colours of private paint stores.Read more ›
Comment 42 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
4.0 out of 5 starsGood book - eBook a bit lacking
By Cylindric on 23 May 2011
Format: Kindle Edition
I'm about half-way through the book, and it's a very interesting and easy-to-absorb read. My only complaint with this Kindle edition is that the book makes many references to various figures and diagrams, none of which seem to be included in the digital edition.
2 Comments 15 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
4.0 out of 5 starsExcellent book, disappointing Kindle edition
By cawhitworth on 5 Oct. 2010
Format: Kindle Edition
I'm not going to review the actual text itself here - there's enough other reviews talking about how excellent it is. Rather, I'll mention how disappointing the Kindle conversion of this title is: rather than having been specifically prepared for the Kindle, it seems the publishers simply scanned the print version and ran it through an OCR package. Incorrect characters abound in the text - for example, the letters "AT" get repeatedly used where a capital 'N' is intended in the section explaining RSA encryption. Also, most of the diagrams from the original text are missing, and where they are present, they are hard to read and flow badly with the text, often being several pages away from the text that refers to them.

It's a shame, because it's a truly excellent book, and the fact it's still readable despite all the errors and omissions is a testament to Singh's talent as a science communicator, but really, if this level of sloppiness and lack of care from publishers is what we can expect from Kindle editions in the future, it is a disappointing future indeed.
Comment 15 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsMy Favorite Non-Fiction Book
By Hagrid's Umbrella VINE VOICE on 8 Jan. 2008
Format: Paperback
This is my favourite non-fiction book. Why? Well it's an interesting and intriguing topic, its well written and an easy read but the key (excuse the bad pun) for me is that Singh strikes the perfect balance of giving you a taster of a technique, explaining it significance and giving examples of this with some great real world examples.

The opening chapter exemplifies this with how it describes Mary Queen of Scots use of a cryptography technique and the unfortunate results it had for her when they were intercepted and eventually decoded.

Knowing little about nano technology I found this chapter near the end very difficult to follow but Singh does well to describe it in a way that did at least give me half a chance at understanding it.

The book was written to accompany his UK Channel 4 TV series; having seen only one episode of it I can say it certainly stand on its own two feet.

If you want a great introduction to this subject I can not see you doing any better than this book. I don't think you have to have a strong interest in the subject to enjoy it. I suspect older kids could get into it easily and there's examples to try on his web site.
Comment 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

product great

Published 28 days ago by lucie mccready
5.0 out of 5 starsCame very good, a couple of pages had some brown dots ...

Came very good, a couple of pages had some brown dots on them but other than that it was very goos

Published 1 month ago by Samantha Dawson
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Great. condition as described

Published 1 month ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

A level maths/computing student enjoyed this

Published 5 months ago by 02K
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent book writer and contents...thanks

Mr Sing is an excellent writer and this title adds further proof. History and modern aspects discussed with clarity.

Published 5 months ago by Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat read

Full of interesting historical stories that bring context to an often misunderstood arena. The examples are generally easy to follow although I would have preferred to have read... Read more

Published 5 months ago by Ryan Purvis
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Broad and in depth

Published 5 months ago by Sam Mcmahon
5.0 out of 5 starsSuch a well-written book

Singh truly knows how to make this topic interesting. The book is concise, well-written and presents a cohesive history of the subject (along with detailed mathematical... Read more

Published 5 months ago by Fawaz Shah
5.0 out of 5 starsDon't miss this book! Totally incredible how encryption has evolved...

I was reading about cryptography somewhere and it recommended this book, which I subsequently purchased. Absolutely unputdownable! Read more

Published 6 months ago by dtanderson
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

great read

Published 6 months ago by Marcus

There's a problem loading this menu at the moment.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

Look for similar items by category

Feedback