A serviceable if too-often superficial update for solid but now-dated histories such as Gary Blackwood’s Mysterious Messages...
Hands-on history for budding spies, hackers, or anyone with a secret message to send.
Though she starts off with a face-plant—a vague claim, with a disappointingly stereotypical illustration, that “the ancient Chinese” had couriers swallow secret messages written on silk—Schwartz goes on to offer a broad and lucid survey of cryptographic strategies. These range from steganography and substitution ciphers to second factor authentication and other recent trends in cybersecurity. She also provides plenty of variously coded examples for readers to decipher as practice, capped by a final challenge to go back and find the clues to a secret message that have been distributed throughout. Her detailed description of how the German Enigma machine worked (and was hacked by the Bletchley Park group in World War II) is indeed “fascinating,” as are the close analyses of still-unsolved messages such as the modern Kryptos inscription outside CIA headquarters. Somewhat less fascinating are the closing chapters, in which she does explain how prime numbers figure in securing internet communications but neglects to mention the possibilities of quantum cryptography and leaves a debatable impression that cyber defenses have been generally successful in staying ahead of “black hat” hackers. Williams adds a diverse group of spot-art figures to go with the array of tables, diagrams, and occasional photos.
A serviceable if too-often superficial update for solid but now-dated histories such as Gary Blackwood’s Mysterious Messages (2009). (index, source list) (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68119-514-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An introduction to ancient Egypt and the Pharaohs buried in the Valley of the Kings. The authors begin with how archaeologist Howard Carter found the tomb of King Tut, then move back 3,000 years to the time of Thutmosis I, who built the first tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Finally they describe the building of the tomb of a later Pharaoh, Ramses II. The backward-forward narration is not always easy to follow, and the authors attribute emotions to the Pharaohs without citation. For example, “Thutmosis III was furious [with Hatshepsut]. He was especially annoyed that she planned to be buried in KV 20, the tomb of her father.” Since both these people lived 3,500 years ago, speculation on who was furious or annoyed should be used with extreme caution. And the tangled intrigue of Egyptian royalty is not easily sorted out in so brief a work. Throughout, though, there are spectacular photographs of ancient Egyptian artifacts, monuments, tomb paintings, jewels, and death masks that will appeal to young viewers. The photographs of the exposed mummies of Ramses II, King Tut, and Seti I are compelling. More useful for the hauntingly beautiful photos than the text. (brief bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7922-7223-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bial (A Handful of Dirt, p. 299, etc.) conjures up ghostly images of the Wild West with atmospheric photos of weathered clapboard and a tally of evocative names: Tombstone, Deadwood, Goldfield, Progress, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, the OK Corral. Tracing the life cycle of the estimated 30,000 ghost towns (nearly 1300 in Utah alone), he captures some echo of their bustling, rough-and-tumble past with passages from contemporary observers like Mark Twain: “If a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was appear in public in a white shirt or stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated.” Among shots of run-down mining works, dusty, deserted streets, and dark eaves silhouetted against evening skies, Bial intersperses 19th-century photos and prints for contrast, plus an occasional portrait of a grizzled modern resident. He suggests another sort of resident too: “At night that plaintive hoo-hoo may be an owl nesting in a nearby saguaro cactus—or the moaning of a restless ghost up in the graveyard.” Children seeking a sense of this partly mythic time and place in American history, or just a delicious shiver, will linger over his tribute. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-06557-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
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