20 December 2000. Thanks to RH.

Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 14:30:31 -0500
From: "McCall, Tim" <tmccall@penguinputnam.com>
Subject: New book on encryption technology vs. NSA from Steven Levy, author of Hackers

Steven Levy, author of the 16-year-old classic Hackers, has written a new book entitled Crypto: When the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age.  In the tradition of Hackers, Crypto celebrates the work of cryptographers and makes a strong case for private freedoms over government intervention. Crypto will be released on January 8, 2001, and we will be reissuing Hackers (which has been out of print) on the same day.

Endorsements for Crypto by Neal Stephenson, Kevin Kelly and David Kahn:

"You've got to hear this story of how renegade geniuses and unlikely heroes liberated crypto from under the noses of spooks, and installed the code in the dream servers of dot-coms. This book persuaded me that despite the dangers of strong crypto (it gives a chance for evil to hide) providing it to the public was a Very Good Thing. Crypto not only makes e-commerce possible, it is also the first political movement in the digital era. Read about the future here."

--Kevin Kelly, author of New Rules for the New Economy and Editor-at-Large, Wired Magazine

"At last! The human story of the breakthroughs that gave us e-commerce and privacy on the Internet. Steve Levy has written cryptography's Soul of a New Machine.'"

--David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers

"Civilian crypto hardly existed three decades ago.  Now we can't get cash from an ATM or buy something on the Net without it.  To tell the story coherently is a service, and to tell it entertainingly is a favor to anyone with a stake in crypto--which nowadays means all of us.  CRYPTO is a book that needed to be written and Steven Levy has written it. "

-- Neal Stephenson, author of Cryptonomicon

Author Bio

Steven Levy is also the author of Hackers and Insanely Great: The Life & Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything. He is Newsweek's chief technology writer, a former writer for Macworld, and a frequent contributor to Wired.