Rating: 
Summary: most helpful
Review: The author of this book was party to a cryptological society, still around, founded in the early 1920's which made, and solved, cryptograms as a hobby just as people 'do' crossword puzzles. All crypto can, loosely, be divided into the sort used by governments, banks, international drug traffickers, and those using digital communications and that type of crypto used by people who just don't want secretaries, nosey people or their teacher peeking into their lives. This book will most likely cover all the later groups crypto needs. I have used it, almost exclusively, for 30 years, where fast and short communication was needed to a known recipient with a decryption 'key'. This book uses complex English and print which is uncomfortably small. There are some 'gems' of obscure information in this book as, by example, a frequency list which identifies the final letter of 10,000 typical words in Portuguese ... O.K. ... nothing I suspect that one could not 'figure out' but nothing I suspect that one ever would. While a trained crypto analyst might unravel these in short order they are impenetrable to most secretaries, nosey folks and schoolteachers.
Rating:
Summary: most helpful
Review: The author of this book was party to a cryptological society, still around, founded in the early 1920's which made, and solved, cryptograms as a hobby just as people `do' crossword puzzles. All crypto can, loosely, be divided into the sort used by governments, banks, international drug traffickers, and those using digital communications and that type of crypto used by people who just don't want secretaries, nosey people or their teacher peeking into their lives. This book will most likely cover all the later groups crypto needs. I have used it, almost exclusively, for 30 years, where fast and short communication was needed to a known recipient with a decryption `key'. This book uses complex English and print which is uncomfortably small. There are some `gems' of obscure information in this book as, by example, a frequency list which identifies the final letter of 10,000 typical words in Portuguese ... O.K. ... nothing I suspect that one could not `figure out' but nothing I suspect that one ever would. While a trained crypto analyst might unravel these in short order they are impenetrable to most secretaries, nosey folks and schoolteachers.
Rating:
Summary: absolutely essential
Review: This appears to be a reprint of the little book by the same title that utterly consumed me, probably for hundreds of hours, in the 1970's. It was old then, and looks even older now. And yet, pushing letters around on a page is timeless. It's laughably low-tech and yet, utterly modern, all at the same time. Some of the tricks and techniques described are so profound and clever, the are reminiscent of calculus in how they demonstrate the power of the well-applied human mind. This book can be an absorbing hobby all by itself. Plus when I found a coded note written by some girls in my junior high school, I was able to read it...
Rating:
Summary: Top book
Review: Very interesting and readable book. However, it has rather small print.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful, worth reading, but superseded by Konheim
Review: When Helen Gaines wrote this book in 1939 (and, by the way, she titled it "Elementary Cryptanalysis", not just "Cryptanalysis", it was by far the best unclassified introduction to cryptology written in English (perhaps even in any language). It is still an admirable book for anyone who wants to start learning cryptology without help; the large number of carefully worked examples and exercises make it excellent for "do it yourself." And for those who intend to make a serious study of modern cryptology, this book is still a useful assist, in the same sense that a vivid and comprehensive memory of high school algebra helps a lot when one tries to learn calculus and differential equations. However, crytology in 2001 is as different from cryptology in 1939 as a Virginia-class submarine is from a pre-WW II sub. So, if it were me, I would start learning from Alan Konheim's book, using Gaines' book as a supplementary text for clarification and examples. Konheim's book requires one to know or learn a certain amount of math that Gaines doesn't require, but since about 1960 it has become very hard to grasp (let alone use) modern crytographic methods without at least as much math as Konheim uses, so one might just as well bite the bullet and learn it.
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