Justin
Moderator Emeritus
Hey all, I just finished a book that I think a lot of you might enjoy. The book is 'Cryptonomicon' by Neal Stephenson. It'll be kind of difficult for me to do a quick summary of it, but here goes.
Basically the novel encompasses a number of characters and jumps back and forth between the present day and WWII. The WWII sections of the book are built around the Allies attempts to break the codes of the Japanese and Germans, as well as the Allies' attempts to cover up the fact that the codes had indeed been broken.
The present-day sections of the novel deal with developing encryption algorithms and how doing so would impact any number of issues from privacy to taxation.
Ok, so now you're thinking 'Great, it's a book about a bunch of number-crunching cypher-geeks. That sounds about as exciting as big pile of mud.'
Not so. Stephenson does an absolutely fantastic job of making crypto not only interesting, but understandable. (I'm terrible with math and numbers, and I could follow his explanations.)
What is really interesting is his linkage of crypto to other topics, including civil rights. What's smokin' hot cool is the fact that he gives play to the Second Amendment, and how firearms fit into an overall view of the whole freedom vs. tyranny thing.
Above and beyond that, Stephenson knows how to write an engaging story, chock full of wit and interesting points of view. But what really seals the whole thing are the little asides he sprinkles throughout the book, sometimes only tangentially related to a part of the overall story, but entertaining nonetheless, and cool for their unexpected nature. The guy has sections of the book devoted to, among other things, Lewis and Clark, the advantages of water-cooled machineguns, Captain Crunch, and how a family of math nerds would go about splitting up a deceased relative's heirlooms.
It's a thick book, but well worth the read. My only gripe is that he refers to magazines as 'clips.' But I can overlook that.
Seriously, go buy this book, it's awesome.
Basically the novel encompasses a number of characters and jumps back and forth between the present day and WWII. The WWII sections of the book are built around the Allies attempts to break the codes of the Japanese and Germans, as well as the Allies' attempts to cover up the fact that the codes had indeed been broken.
The present-day sections of the novel deal with developing encryption algorithms and how doing so would impact any number of issues from privacy to taxation.
Ok, so now you're thinking 'Great, it's a book about a bunch of number-crunching cypher-geeks. That sounds about as exciting as big pile of mud.'
Not so. Stephenson does an absolutely fantastic job of making crypto not only interesting, but understandable. (I'm terrible with math and numbers, and I could follow his explanations.)
What is really interesting is his linkage of crypto to other topics, including civil rights. What's smokin' hot cool is the fact that he gives play to the Second Amendment, and how firearms fit into an overall view of the whole freedom vs. tyranny thing.
Above and beyond that, Stephenson knows how to write an engaging story, chock full of wit and interesting points of view. But what really seals the whole thing are the little asides he sprinkles throughout the book, sometimes only tangentially related to a part of the overall story, but entertaining nonetheless, and cool for their unexpected nature. The guy has sections of the book devoted to, among other things, Lewis and Clark, the advantages of water-cooled machineguns, Captain Crunch, and how a family of math nerds would go about splitting up a deceased relative's heirlooms.
It's a thick book, but well worth the read. My only gripe is that he refers to magazines as 'clips.' But I can overlook that.
Seriously, go buy this book, it's awesome.
