Rating: 
Summary: The Whole Story
Review: "Enigma" by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore is an up-to-date look at the history of the cracking of the code, from the initial efforts in Poland through the final changes the German's made in May of 1945. The most impressive thing about this book is how comprehensive it is. The author covers all of the aspects of the code-breaking effort. Including some of the technical details involved in breaking the code, the personalities of those involved, the stories of their efforts to capture code books and equipment, and the effects that their efforts had on the war. The book is arranged in chronological order, with appendixes provided to give more of the detail of the technical aspects. The epilogue includes a wrap-up of what happened to the major participants after the war. This is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in World War II and Enigma.
Rating:
Summary: The Whole Story
Review: "Enigma" by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore is an up-to-date look at the history of the cracking of the code, from the initial efforts in Poland through the final changes the German's made in May of 1945. The most impressive thing about this book is how comprehensive it is. The author covers all of the aspects of the code-breaking effort. Including some of the technical details involved in breaking the code, the personalities of those involved, the stories of their efforts to capture code books and equipment, and the effects that their efforts had on the war. The book is arranged in chronological order, with appendixes provided to give more of the detail of the technical aspects. The epilogue includes a wrap-up of what happened to the major participants after the war. This is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in World War II and Enigma.
Rating:
Summary: Good on history, weak on technical info
Review: After reading Andrew Hodges's biography of Turing I was interested in reading more about how Enigma was cracked. Unfortunately this book is a little short on details. Most of the technical info has been relegated to appendices and I feel that the author didn't really understand the cryptographic techniques used. As a result I know far more about the Enigma itself from Hodges's book than from this book. In fact a recent Nova program on PBS gave more technical details. It's rare to find less detail in a book than a TV programme.On the other hand I didn't expect the historical material to be interesting - merely a list of dates and U-boat numbers. I was wrong. It makes a fascinating read with all sorts of cloak and dagger exploits. In fact it's probably the most interesting WWII book I have read. So all in all I highly recommend this book but you need to turn to other sources if you want to understand the technical challenges that faced Turing et al.
Rating:
Summary: Good on history, weak on technical info
Review: After reading Andrew Hodges's biography of Turing I was interested in reading more about how Enigma was cracked. Unfortunately this book is a little short on details. Most of the technical info has been relegated to appendices and I feel that the author didn't really understand the cryptographic techniques used. As a result I know far more about the Enigma itself from Hodges's book than from this book. In fact a recent Nova program on PBS gave more technical details. It's rare to find less detail in a book than a TV programme. On the other hand I didn't expect the historical material to be interesting - merely a list of dates and U-boat numbers. I was wrong. It makes a fascinating read with all sorts of cloak and dagger exploits. In fact it's probably the most interesting WWII book I have read. So all in all I highly recommend this book but you need to turn to other sources if you want to understand the technical challenges that faced Turing et al.
Rating: 
Summary: New Stories of the Great Code War
Review: In last year's film _U-571_, tribute was paid to those American heroes who were able to grab a Nazi Enigma encryption machine, thereby enabling the allies to break enemy messages and win the war. _U-571_ showed the American heroes capturing Enigma, when in truth it was British heroes who did so, and not just once. Nonetheless, the film did demonstrate the continuing realization of the importance of the cracking of Enigma, the most famous episode of codebreaking in history. The story of the English boffins at Bletchley Park, led by the strange, brilliant, and doomed Alan Turing is indeed one of the great victories of the war. But it wasn't all mathematicians, primitive computers, and brainpower. _Enigma: The Battle for the Code_ (John Wiley & Sons) by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore tells plenty about the cerebral efforts within Bletchley Park, but expands the story to include the cloak-and-dagger work and military captures of German vessels that were able to bring codebooks, Enigma machines, and encoding wheels into the purview of the cryptographers. The victory over Enigma is a thrilling story that first started being revealed only twenty years ago, and this book helps to describe the difficulties the decoders went through because of the hazards of getting information from the field. And it is a good story, with hair-raising escapes, bureaucratic in-fighting, eccentric characters, and genuine heroism on the high seas. Some of the spywork was mundane. We owe a lot to Hans Thilo Schmidt, for instance, the German who spied for the French Secret Service, providing keys to the system as early as 1931. Schmidt was, however, no hero; he was simply in it for the money, to pay for vacations and mistresses. He continued to provide information for pay until caught by the Germans in 1943. Captured, he took cyanide, perhaps provided by his family and perhaps allowed by his captors to avoid an embarrassing trial. His story has not been told before, and came from sources previously unavailable to historians. _Enigma_ gives a chronology of the battle for the codes that demonstrates how vital decryption was in winning the war in the Atlantic. When Bletchley Park could decrypt quickly, information got to the convoys enabling them to avoid U-boats. When the Nazis changed methods of using Enigma, information slowed and ships were lost. The ups and downs of gaining information from spies or from captured ships and using that information to crack messages is well told here. The victory over Enigma is rightly remembered and celebrated. Sebag-Montefiore expands the extent of the victory beyond the Bletchley cerebrations to the mostly unsung heroes who gave the code-crunchers something to work on. The book is full of information, including appendices on details of how the Enigma machine worked and a useful chronology of high points in the Enigma battle. It is a vivid account of the battles at sea and on land that won the code war.
Rating:
Summary: New Stories of the Great Code War
Review: In last year's film _U-571_, tribute was paid to those American heroes who were able to grab a Nazi Enigma encryption machine, thereby enabling the allies to break enemy messages and win the war. _U-571_ showed the American heroes capturing Enigma, when in truth it was British heroes who did so, and not just once. Nonetheless, the film did demonstrate the continuing realization of the importance of the cracking of Enigma, the most famous episode of codebreaking in history. The story of the English boffins at Bletchley Park, led by the strange, brilliant, and doomed Alan Turing is indeed one of the great victories of the war. But it wasn't all mathematicians, primitive computers, and brainpower. _Enigma: The Battle for the Code_ (John Wiley & Sons) by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore tells plenty about the cerebral efforts within Bletchley Park, but expands the story to include the cloak-and-dagger work and military captures of German vessels that were able to bring codebooks, Enigma machines, and encoding wheels into the purview of the cryptographers. The victory over Enigma is a thrilling story that first started being revealed only twenty years ago, and this book helps to describe the difficulties the decoders went through because of the hazards of getting information from the field. And it is a good story, with hair-raising escapes, bureaucratic in-fighting, eccentric characters, and genuine heroism on the high seas. Some of the spywork was mundane. We owe a lot to Hans Thilo Schmidt, for instance, the German who spied for the French Secret Service, providing keys to the system as early as 1931. Schmidt was, however, no hero; he was simply in it for the money, to pay for vacations and mistresses. He continued to provide information for pay until caught by the Germans in 1943. Captured, he took cyanide, perhaps provided by his family and perhaps allowed by his captors to avoid an embarrassing trial. His story has not been told before, and came from sources previously unavailable to historians. _Enigma_ gives a chronology of the battle for the codes that demonstrates how vital decryption was in winning the war in the Atlantic. When Bletchley Park could decrypt quickly, information got to the convoys enabling them to avoid U-boats. When the Nazis changed methods of using Enigma, information slowed and ships were lost. The ups and downs of gaining information from spies or from captured ships and using that information to crack messages is well told here. The victory over Enigma is rightly remembered and celebrated. Sebag-Montefiore expands the extent of the victory beyond the Bletchley cerebrations to the mostly unsung heroes who gave the code-crunchers something to work on. The book is full of information, including appendices on details of how the Enigma machine worked and a useful chronology of high points in the Enigma battle. It is a vivid account of the battles at sea and on land that won the code war.
Rating:
Summary: A great antidote to the Hollywood history re-writing machine
Review: It's remarkable that 60 years on new information continues to surface about the breaking of the Enigma code. Having followed much of the "new material" released over the last 20 years in books and films it is great to see other key players in the Enigma drama getting due credit. Forget about the crude attempts by Hollywood in the film U-571 to credit the americans with breaking the code, and read this book to find out about the huge contributions by the Poles (who were breaking Enigma in the early 1930's), the British and Canadian seaman (boarding subs and weather reporting trawlers to capture code books), and the French. This book is not for those who want a deep understanding of deciphering techniques used at Bletchly Park - this is covered in other exellent volumes (see Sarah Flannery's book "In code: A mathematical journey" if you want a gentle introduction to cryptography ). It does give detailed and personal accounts of the risks taken by others in the armed forces and outside to secure code books, Enigma machine wheels and other "cribs" to help the code breakers. The hardest part for me was reading about the fate of the various Polish mathemeticians who pioneered the Enigma work throughout the 1930's, and who were mostly left to perish in tragic circumstances by the French and British, despite being got out of Poland after the German invasion.
Rating:
Summary: YSDX FWPO QLSV DSCA PXCH
Review: Once I picked this book up, it was very hard to put down. Sebag-Montefiore has compiled a gripping glimpse into the code breaking efforts by the British. His source and reference material are outstanding and his explanations of the technical aspects are gentle enough for the non-cryptologist to follow. I felt his technical analysis was just right, enough to let me understand the problems the Bletchly Park code breakers faced, while not to technical for me to lose interest. Those wanting a in depth review of the methods used may want to look elsewhere, but I believe this book details the human story behind Bletchly Park's success masterfully. It's amazing to me that despite the capability of the Enigma machine, its ultimate Achilles heel was that it was operated by humans, who are in the end non-random and prone to habit. The eccentricities of the code breakers, the stiff British upper lip, and the maverick attitude of the US code breakers are all displayed for the reader. The exploits of the Royal Navy is nothing short of truly heroic in their efforts to obtain code books to aid Bletchly's cause. It's ironic that the Enigma was first broken by three Polish mathematicians, who have never received much credit. A fascinating book on exploits that had far reaching consequences after the end of WWII. Strongest recomendation.
Rating:
Summary: YSDX FWPO QLSV DSCA PXCH
Review: Once I picked this book up, it was very hard to put down. Sebag-Montefiore has compiled a gripping glimpse into the code breaking efforts by the British. His source and reference material are outstanding and his explanations of the technical aspects are gentle enough for the non-cryptologist to follow. I felt his technical analysis was just right, enough to let me understand the problems the Bletchly Park code breakers faced, while not to technical for me to lose interest. Those wanting a in depth review of the methods used may want to look elsewhere, but I believe this book details the human story behind Bletchly Park's success masterfully. It's amazing to me that despite the capability of the Enigma machine, its ultimate Achilles heel was that it was operated by humans, who are in the end non-random and prone to habit. The eccentricities of the code breakers, the stiff British upper lip, and the maverick attitude of the US code breakers are all displayed for the reader. The exploits of the Royal Navy is nothing short of truly heroic in their efforts to obtain code books to aid Bletchly's cause. It's ironic that the Enigma was first broken by three Polish mathematicians, who have never received much credit. A fascinating book on exploits that had far reaching consequences after the end of WWII. Strongest recomendation.
Rating:
Summary: A blow-by-blow account
Review: The Ultra secret was kept for a long time after WWII. Recently declassified, it was the Allied code name for the Enigma ciphering system used by the Germans to coordinate U-boat attacks, to gather weather reports and intellegence, etc. This book is interesting in that the author gives ample space to the sailors and intellegence officers that gathered hard data, often from sinking U-boats, instead of focussing exclusively on the technical work performed at Bletchley Park. The result is an action-packed account that speeds through the material, while giving the reader a glimpse at the personalities and actions of the people responsible for solving the Enigma.
The book is arranged roughly chronologically, but Sebag-Montefiore divides his chapters into subject areas that span months at a time. This makes for a better flow. Therefore, the book backtracks from time-to-time, but it is never confusing, due to the skill of the author (and his editor). Oft-neglected episodes are included, much to the benefit of the book - because the U.S. and Britain were the two largest Allied powers, many books overlook contributions by other nations. Not so with this book - the Polish codebreakers that originally duplicated the Enigma and broke the peacetime ciphers are given more space than the celebrated Alan Turing. Likewise, the Canadian contribution to convoy duty (and therefore U-boat hunting and intellegence gathering from sinking U-boats) is given its rightful share of space.
The author wisely keeps the pace moving with events and doesn't allow the narrative to bog down in technical descriptions of the deciphering procedures. These procedures are gathered as appendices at the end of the book. The appendices are not great - they are descriptive without going into the mathematical detail, and therefore come across as "hand-waving." Luckily this difficulty does not detract from the main part of the book, so is not a fatal flaw, but those looking for a technical explanation should look elsewhere.
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