The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Timesto the Internet by David KahnReview by: Eliot A. CohenForeign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1997), p. 129Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20048054 .

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Recent Books

The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive

History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, revised ed.

by David Kahn. New York: Scribner,

1996,1,181 pp. $65.00. When it first appeared in 1967, Kahn's

book on cryptography received warm

reviews from both experts and an ap

preciative lay audience. With panache and scholarly authority, it covered such

famous cryptographic stories as the Aus

trian empire's superbly efficient "black

chamber" in the eighteenth century, the

Dreyfus Affair, and the antics of Herbert

Yardley, the bizarre genius whose successful

attack on secret Japanese communications

enabled the United States to outmaneuver

Japan at the Washington Naval Conference

of 1921-22. In 1967, however, the big story had yet to come out publicly, namely that

the British, later assisted by the United

States, had mounted the most successful

codebreaking effort in history against Nazi Germany during World War II. Un

fortunately, this barely revised version of a

classic work assigns this and other major stories that have come out in the last three

decades to an inadequate additional chap

ter just 14 pages long. A pity, because Kahn

has continued to publish important works

on this subject in the intervening decades.

Understanding, then, that this is more a

reprint than a revision, readers may still

consult it with profit and interest.

Maos Military Romanticism: China and

the Korean War, i?fo-i?f?. byshu

guang zhang. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995,338 pp. $45.00.

The history ofthe Korean War, like that of

Vietnam, has been written with remarkably

little reference to the other side. For that

reason alone this would be a welcome

book, drawing as it does on Chinese

sources, including documentary collections

recently published in China. This fasci

nating study shows that Chinese leaders

were confounded by a war that did not fit

the theories they had devised in years of

struggle with the Nationalists and Japan ese. The author is unsparing in his brief examination of American ethnocentrism

and no less scathing on the errors of Mao

and the People's Liberation Army, and will leave the former's reputation as a master

strategist sorely?and rightly?damaged.

The Readers Companion to Military History,

edited by robert

COWLEY AND GEOFFREY PARKER.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996, 573 PP- $45-oo.

What were the key battles in the long struggle between the Turks and Byzan tines? When were skis first used in war

fare? Was the Egyptian victory at Kadesh a

product of military genius, or a "triumph

of royal advertising?" These brief, well crafted essays on nearly 600 topics in

military history offer a source of education

and enjoyment to both scholars and lay readers. Drawing

on the talents of over

150 authorities, the editors present discus

sions on military theory, famous battles

and leaders, and military organizations, as well as on more obscure topics such as

the "Representation of War in Western

Art" and "Military Medicine." While Western military matters are "privileged,"

a good accounting is given of Chinese,

Japanese, and Korean military affairs.

Oddly enough, the editors also provide

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, call 800-255-2665.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June 1007 [129]

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