"You know - 'A' becomes 'Z' and 'B' is 'Y.' That's probably the simplest."Ĭomputers and advances in mathematical theory have changed the science of codemaking and breaking - in favor of the codemaker. Kahn feels that everyone, at some time, has had some experience with the simplest forms of codes. Kahn thinks he was appealing to that voyeuristic codebreaker of a 12-year-old that lurks in most of us.
It is a history of cryptology and the effect of code and cyphers on a man through the ages. Such spoon-feeding of fact after fact produced the nearly impossible - a thousand-page tome on a subject hardly destined to titillate, became a best seller (75,000 in hard-back). He seems content drinking white wine, as he sits neatly packaged in a navy pinstripe, in a corner of a Washington restaurant, flacking his second book, "Hitler's Spies." In the age of hyper-hype, Kahn, 48, knows it is not enough to write the book you have to be a song-and-dance man as well.Ī decade ago, he laced the heavy material in "The Codebreakers" with fascinating asides - from Plutarch to pig latin ("You have to! After all, everything you write is to be read and you have to see that they'll read the damn thing?). The ex-newspaperman-turned-scholar's idea of fun is rummaging around the National Archives or learning German for his book research - or, winning at tennis or "rotting away" on some beach. His books - a mix of the anecdotal, massive research and impressive analysis - are much like Kahn. In the end he kisses them off - he dosn't take himself or his views all that seriously.
Kahn is both a serious historian and purveyor, at times, of glib but interesting generalizations. I suppose they aren't the type to care about those kind of things." Kahn then shrugs the boundless curbstone Freudian possibilities to an end, "It's all so sublimated, really."Īnd that's the way it is talking with Kahn, author of "The Code-breakers" and "Hitler's Spies," slim, wiry man (5'6") who has a reporter's darting interest in a variety of topics. What kind of person wouldn't enjoy learning other people's secrets? You could say that all surgeons are sadists as well." But just remember, all reporters would fall under this great rubric too.
"Well, I think the ultimate real fascination is a psycho-sexual one.Īuthor David Kahn is venturing his psychological interpretation of people who enjoy breaking codes.
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