This is NOT David Kahn's excellent book "The Codebreakers". This is a British volume full of personal stories of thirty people who worked at Bletchley Park or at British code-breaking in the field during WW2. I found it a very touching and personal book. Each person tells their own story in a five- or six-page essay, and the stories cover a whole range of activities, from cryptanalytical work to typing-and-filing to the people who constructed and maintained the physical buildings. As the introduction says, "...few of the events described here were chronicled at the time, and those who worked at Bletchley and its outstations were forbidden to talk or write about it -- almost to remember it. The compiling of this book has rested almost entirely on personal memories; and that is unusual in an account which pretends to any sort of accuracy. Moreover, nobody who worked at Bletchley can now be under 65; several contributors are in their mid-80s. For all of us clear and accurate recollection of highly specialized Top Secret facts across fifty years has been a demanding task, requiring much cross-checking." There are lots of details about how real live wartime code-breaking worked fifty years ago -- details I have seen nowhere else. I recommend this book to any cypherpunk. Codebreakers: the inside story of Bletchley Park. ed. by Francis Harry Hinsley and Alan Stripp. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1994 (hardback issued in 1993). ISBN 0-19-285304-X. US$13.95, at my local bookstore. -- John Gilmore gnu@toad.com -- gnu@cygnus.com -- gnu@eff.org A well-regulated intelligentsia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear books, shall not be infringed.