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Bible Code, The
Drosnin, Michael. 1997. 264 pages.
Categories: Literature |
Unfortunately a bestseller, The Bible Code is a poor man's crystal ball for the present. It is
a mathematical inevitability that computers can find patterns in a large text, especially when
you don't declare what you're looking for ahead of time, or the distance between the
letters. Without constraints, any pattern you wish to find is there. This is as useful as
finding your telephone number somewhere within the digits of PI, and just as revealing. The
book claims that the Wright Brothers are in Genesis 30:30, Newton is in Numbers 18:30-21:5, Watergate
in Genesis 28:21 through Numbers 19:18 (this is a LARGE span), President Kennedy in
Genesis 34:19-50:4, and on and on.
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Cryptographic Imagination, The: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet
Rosenheim, Shawn James. 1997. 264 pages.
Categories: Literature |
Perhaps English majors will enjoy this book, but I didn't. The
author constantly draws parallels between encryption and totally
unrelated literature. Treating foreign languages or the Bible
as a type of cryptography is going too far. If you're a Poe
fan, this book is for you, but if you'd rather learn something
about cryptography, find another book.
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Cryptography of Shakespeare, The: Part I
Arensberg, Walter Conrad. 1922. 280 pages.
Categories: Literature, Steganography |
Somehow I doubt a "Part Two" was ever made. The book argues that Francis Bacon is the true
author of the works of Shakespeare. He provides page after excruciating page of hand computed
acrostics, demonstrating how the word BACON appears throughout Shakespeare's works. More proof
that people have a need to see patterns where they don't exist.
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Cryptonomicon
Stephenson, Neal. 1999. 918 pages.
Categories: Literature |
It is a rare pleasure to read a novel with a cryptography theme that gets all of the crypto details
right. The book switches between two story lines (WWII and current day), and ultimately draws it
all together. Lots of typical Stephenson tangents and diversions. Apparently (or hopefully), the first of a series.
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This books seems to be held as everyone’s example of the quintessential lipogram -- not once in its 50,110 words does it contain the letter "e". This book is often collected by cryptographers because of its intentional deviation from normal letter frequencies. Other Lipogrammatic works (according to this page) that I won’t bother tracking down include "La Disparition" (Georges Perec, 1969), "Odyessey" (Tryphiodorus), and various novels by Lope De Vega Carpio (1562-1635).
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Poe introduced the public to letter frequency cryptanalysis when the short story "The Gold-Bug" was
first published in 1843. It's got secret ink, cryptography, buried treasure -- all the good
stuff. You can download the story for free.
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Mysterious Bible Codes, The
Jeffrey, Grant R. 1998. 197 pages.
Categories: Literature |
I promise that this will be the last additional Bible-code type book I review here (barring something egregiously entertaining). There are now unfortunately a wide selection of Bible code books to choose from, mostly on discount racks, as the newer quick-to-market Bible code books show steganographically encoded predictions of events that occurred nine months prior to publication. This one was given to me, and I’m adding it to this list (shortly before I throw it away) because it has a chapter that presumes to answer Bible code critics (here’s a good one) and an appendix that does a really bad job at educating its readers about proper statistical interpretation.
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Haven't finished reading this book yet.
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Crows are Black Everywhere
Yardley, Herbert O. / Grabo, Carl. 1945 (Currently out of print). 247 pages.
Categories: Literature |
Haven't finished reading this book yet.
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Crypto Man, The
Royce, Kenneth. 1984 (Currently out of print). 284 pages.
Categories: Literature |
Haven't finished reading this book yet.
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Cryptogram, The
Verne, Jules. 1882 (Currently out of print). 260 pages.
Categories: Literature |
Haven't finished reading this book yet.
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Haven't finished reading this book yet.
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Haven't finished reading this book yet.
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Haven't finished reading this book yet.
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