Right off the bat, reading Steven Levy's preface to Crypto he draws us in. He brings up the daunting privacy issues that Pariser and Andrews both brought to us (except in a more diluted fashion by Levy in the preface) but then brings hope for sabotaging others' efforts to steal our privacy. "a potential antidote exists: cryptography..." (pg 1). He scares us a little and then lures us into a nicer place which doubles as a brilliant introduction to his topic.
Another thing I love about this book is the style it is written in. Levy could have written a book simply listing off facts about how codes are made and broken or some other monotonous, boring way of depicting cryptography, but instead, he writes a story, about real people, and in it is included real human thoughts and even a little romance. Beginning on pg 3, Levy begins the story of Whitfield Diffie and a woman named Mary Fischer. It starts of simple, an nice story for the reader and then he twists it right into the subject matter without losing the reader's attention. "His rudeness appalled Mary. But she hadn't yet cracked his code" (pg 4). From there he really begins to talk about how he found his interest in cryptography, how he came to know his partner Marty Hellman and their partner Ralph Merkle, and how he came to get involved in creating such codes to protect privacy on the internet.
The story shows the ups and downs of their research. I really enjoyed the portrayal of excitement Diffie had as he discovered digital signatures on pgs 73-75. I've definitely felt the disappointment of finally figuring out a great idea and then forgetting the whole thing, fortunately, he regained his memory of it and shared his excitement with his wife the second she got home from work before rushing to Hellman's house soon after.
Overall, I would suggest this book to my colleagues from what I've read so far simply because it tells a story while also showing just how important it is to stand up for our privacy.
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