Emily picked up Steven Levy’s crypto for me a while back. I finally got around to reading it this past month. I can’t believe I waited this long! It is an excellent book.

This is a book about cryptography and How the code rebels beat the government — saving privacy in the digital age [from the cover]. Steven Levy turns out to be a master story teller, tackling the intracacies of cryptography while keeping the topic light and readable.

Levy keeps it interesting by focusing on the personalities of the innovators such as RSA and Diffie-Hellman – two critical pieces of public key cryptography. Most Internet users do not know that without these innovations, secure commerce using web browsers may not be possible.

Although the cryptographers profiled in crypto worked for decades to protect privacy, it’s ironic that most Internet users do not understand the privacy concept. In particular, email is not private. But, using tools such as GNU Privacy Guard, you and I can share secure email — email that is truly secure and private.

The best part of the story is the Epilogue. I will not ruin the ending…