The Code Book: How to Make It, Break It, Hack It, Crack It

This book by Simon Singh presents the history of encryption since the ancient Egyptians up to the today’s Internet era. It is not a technical book, and can be read and enjoyed without any special mathemathica background, being able to introduce the basics of the encryption algorithms available today, and used also in protected internet transactions. I warlmly recommend this book to all the people willing to understand the enormous power of message encryption today and in the past.
A very juicy part regards the story of the Second World War, and how the “unbreakable” german Enigma machine has been in fact broken. Puzzles are present almost in every chapter, but it isn’t a must to solve them to proceed with the reading.
I really enjoyed this book, and expecially the focus on the ingenious and groundbreaking power of the human brain.