The Isis Adventure

Thought I'd start a thread where people can recommend books that they have read, preferably at least remotely related to puzzles, ciphers and codes, but not limited to.

So I'll start with the best book I've read about cryptology and ciphers.

Simon Singh - The Code Book

This book, imo, is a very good summary of the history of cryptology, ciphers and codebreaking. It covers just about every significant development in the field from "Shave the man's head, tattoo the message on his head, wait until the hair grows back and send him on his way to be shaved again on the receiving end", to quantum cryptography. Singh writes in a way that is both easy to understand and fun to read, and I will recommend this book to any remotely interested in the topic.

I agree, I didn't read the book cover to cover but dipped in here and there and it was still very interesting, might actually sit down and read through it all if I ever get a moment...

Couldn't resist!

I popped off to amazon and picked up one at a remarkable price.

Ade

I've just finished another book by Simon Singh, about a mathematical problem that stood unsolved for approx. 350 years. Again he writes in such a way that you don't really need an understanding for mathematics, it's mostly the story about the efforts invested in the problem that makes you want to read on. The book covers, like The Code Book does with cryptography, the essence of mathematical progress and the development of various techniques that ultimately led to the proof of Fermat's last theorem.

Fermat's last theorem states that there are no whole number solutions to xn+yn=zn (couldn't find a way to elevate the 'n', so this is to be read like x2 (X x X), x3 (X x X x X), x4 (X x X x X x X) and so on), for all values of 'n' greater than 2. It is a remarkably simple statement that most people can understand, but proving that it's true is a completely different story. It's interesting to note that it wasn't really a theorem, because that's the status it gets when it's actually proved, so in reality it was just a conjecture until Andrew Wiles finally found a way to prove it (the manuscript detailing the proof was about 130 pages long).

Simon Singh - Fermat's Last Theorem