[The_Rorschach]

Have a friend at school who's really into The Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson), which I kind of like myself, but he said he was a little lost on the topic of cryptology. I could understand, Stephenson knows what he's talking about, but his analogy with the bicycle chain is a little too simplified -which is to be expected considering the coding techniques are supposed to be archaic. Anyway, my friend got the jist of it, but said he didn't really grasp it. Tried to help him by giving him The Puzzle Palace (James Bamford), which is sort of related, but it wasn't what he wanted because thats more the history of the NSA and ONI organizations than anything else.

I was an idiot for even suggesting it.

On his own he found a book called The Code Book (Simon Singh), which I borrowed earlier today. Just finished it now, and I have to say, this book is fucking excellent. I've always heard that if you truly understand a topic, you can explain the concept even to a small child, but never really bought into it. Yet it is with that sort of precision that the guy explains everything from the history of cyptography to asymmetrical modulo-encryption itself.

Book is a little dated, 1999, but certainly worth browsing.